The court case against Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos It will be led by Judge Karen Vanessa Chavarria Morales and Prosecutor Manuel de Jesús Rugama Peña, who have been the executioners of other political prisoners, including priests and media workers.
According to the case file, under case number 026463-ORM4-2022-PN, the accusation against Álvarez was filed in the Ninth Criminal Court of Hearing in Managua, whose head is Chavarria.
The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo accused Monsignor Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, for the alleged crimes of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news, the same charges for which the dictatorship has sentenced more than 40 political prisoners.
After 116 days kidnapped under de facto “house by jail”, the regime presented the 56-year-old religious leader on Tuesday, with evident weight loss. Álvarez is the first bishop arrested and charged since Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007.
The judge and the prosecutor in the case have a long history of subordinating their judicial decisions to the will of Ortega. Both coincided in 2021 in the case against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCh).
Chavarria, the judge who imprisoned Cristiana Chamorro
On June 2, 2021, Judge Chavarría Morales ordered the search and capture of the presidential candidate and former president of the FVBCh, Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, who —according to independent surveys— could defeat President Ortega in fair and transparent elections.
Chavarría Morales was sanctioned by the United States on March 9, when she was added to the list of corrupt and undemocratic actors known as the “Engel List.” The US government accuses the judge of “abusing her authority and subverting legal processes to act against political opponents of the regime, and disqualifying opposition candidates.”
From 2018 to date, Chavarría has been in charge of prosecuting and sentencing more than 50 political prisoners, including Irlanda Jerez, Ruth Matute, Jaime Navarrete, María Adilia Peralta, Sergio Beteta and the brothers Santiago and Cristhian Fajardo.
The judge is also in charge of the case against the priest Enrique Martínez Gamboa, 64, who was kidnapped by the regime last October and later accused of the alleged crimes of “conspiracy” and “spread of fake news.
Prosecutor Rugama Peña, the persecutor of journalists
Rugama Peña has been one of the prosecutors in charge of the persecution against the independent press in cases such as the recent persecution of workers of the newspaper La Prensabut also for threatening journalists in the interrogations carried out in June 2021, during the fabrication of the case for money laundering against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation.
The prosecutor was a policeman and has always been linked to the structures of the Sandinista Front.
Rugama Peña together with prosecutors Carlos Rafael Espinoza Castilla and Giscard Antonio Moraga Guillén formed the Public Ministry team that was in charge of the case against the FVBCh. In this trial, the following were sentenced: Cristiana Chamorro Barrios and her brother Pedro Joaquín, the workers of the Foundation, Walter Gómez and Marcos Fletes, and the driver Pedro Vásquez.
