The justice of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sentenced this Wednesday, January 18, the relatives of the opponent, Javier Álvarez Zamora, who were arbitrarily detained on September 13, 2022 after a police raid in which the authorities tried to capture Álvarez Zamora.
opponent’s wife, Jeannine Horvilleur63, and her daughter, Ana Carolina Álvarez Horvilleur, 43, both of Nicaraguan and French nationality, were sentenced to eight years in prison for the alleged commission of the crimes of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” and ” propagation of false news through information and communication technologies”.
Along the same lines, Félix Roiz Sotomayor, son-in-law of the opponent and husband of Ana Carolina, was sentenced to ten years in prison for the same, of which the State of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan society appear as “victim or offended.”
The trial against the three relatives of Álvarez was carried out four months after they were imprisoned in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), known as El Chipote. The sentence will be confirmed on January 26 next.
Terrified relatives
The arrest of relatives of political prisoners is “a new pattern” of repression that human rights defenders have been identifying since the end of 2022, which is generating “fear” among those affected and forcing them to “silence” in the face of abuses by of the Ortega regime.
“At that moment there is a fear among the relatives of the political prisoners of being able to speak,” warned Juan Carlos Arce, of the human rights group Nicaragua Nunca Más.he voices of the victims have been essential to be able to sue, to be able to influence the protection systems, and at this moment the Ortega regime, as never before, is persecuting the victims and not only their targets but also their relatives.” he continued.
In Arce’s opinion, at this moment in Nicaragua there is a “sustained repression against family nuclei”, which makes effective the recipe of the regime of “prison or exile” for the voices that he considers opposition. “ANDIt is a way to send a message to the population, and to Nicaraguan society, that the regime is relentless in its repression, in the persecution of anyone it considers an enemy,” he explained.
The defender also warned that this persecution of relatives of political prisoners is mainly affecting who have resorted to the inter-American system. He pointed out that in the Collective alone they have processed more than fifty precautionary measures before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and “we are seeing that when the State finds out about the processing of precautionary measures, contrary to thinking that the attacks stop, which is doing is increasing the siege.”
The case of Rodrigo Navarrete
Another case that perfectly illustrates the persecution of the relatives of political prisoners is the arrest of Rodrigo Navarrete, uncle of the political prisoner Jaime Navarrete, who was captured on November 25 in the Loma Linda neighborhood, southwest of Managua. After four years of demanding the release of his nephew, he is now being accused of committing the alleged crime of “illegal possession or possession of firearms and ammunition.”
“Don Rodrigo was the only relative of the political prisoner Jaime Navarrete who visited him in jail,” said the human rights defender. The arrest of him, by the regime, “It is a punitive action that is directed at Mr. Rodrigo and his nephew (Jaime) who is a political prisoner,” he stressed.
Finally Arce remembered that there are arrests of people linked to the Sandinista Front in which the families have not said anything either. “There is clearly an objective here to silence the voices of the victims, to paralyze them, so that they don’t talk to anyone,” he stressed.
