This January 10, the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, the first bishop of Nicaragua imprisoned and politically prosecuted by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, was taken to the Managua courts.
The Ortega regime accuses him of the alleged crimes of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news, through information technology, to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society.
This Tuesday Monsignor Rolando Álvarez faced the justice of Ortega y Murillo in an initial hearing, which has been classified by legal experts as “null and illegal”, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, without his usual suit as a bishop of the Church. catholic.
Related news: Calidh: Process against Monsignor Álvarez “violates international human rights commitments”
The accusation against Monsignor Rolando Álvarez was admitted by the tenth criminal court judge of Managua, Gloria María Saavedra Corrales, who sent the case to oral and public trial, but the official note of the Directorate of Communication and Public Relations of the Central Judicial Complex of Managua does not specify the start date of the trial against the cardinal.
“The judicial authority reviewed the precautionary measures decreed in the preliminary hearing, maintaining house arrest, likewise, admitted the exchange of evidence information and referred the case to trial. And since Uriel Antonio Vallejos is accused in the same case for the same crimes, the letter to INTERPOL for his capture will continue to be in force, “says the official note.
Monsignor Rolando Álvarez is one of the most critical voices against the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo, the binomial that controls the strings of power in Nicaragua, a country mired in a sociopolitical, economic and human rights crisis since 2018. In that year, the The regime ordered the social protests calling for the dictator’s resignation to be put down with blood and fire.
After more than four months in captivity, on December 13, 2021, the dictatorship presented Monsignor Rolando Álvarez in the Managua courts. The photographs disseminated by the propaganda media showed the priest in a blue guayabera and without his bishop’s cassock; his face looked haggard.
The lawyer, human rights defender and author of the report «Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church?»Martha Patricia Molina, considers that the judicial process against Bishop Rolando Álvarez presents a series of irregularities that reveal the arbitrariness of the State.
Some 15 priests, lay people, seminarians, journalists from Diocese Media and Bishop Rolando Álvarez are part of the more than 230 political prisoners of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Most are accused of crimes under the Sovereignty Law and the Special Cybercrime Law, two legal instruments invented to imprison opponents and religious.
