Four experts and 12 witnesses will testify in the trial faced by the Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez for the alleged crimes of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news to the detriment of the Nicaraguan State and society, the Judiciary of Nicaragua reported this Wednesday. Nicaragua.
Among the 12 witnesses who will testify against the bishop, who is very critical of the government of President Daniel Ortega, there are three policemen, two state workers and Sandinista sympathizers, according to general data on the matter published by the Judiciary.
The judge of the second criminal district court of Managua, Nidia Camila Tardencilla Rodríguez, will be in charge of the trial against the chief, who has been detained since last August 19 and is the first bishop arrested and accused since the former Sandinista guerrilla Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007.
According to exiled Nicaraguan lawyer Yader Morazán, who has followed the case, the witnesses against the bishop are state workers or sympathizers of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
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Through Twitter, Morazán assured that one of the witnesses, Josefa Azucena Jirón López, is secretary of the Ministry of Education in the department of Matagalpa (north); while Erling Francisco Picado Montoya, also a witness, is a public defender in the Matagalpa Judicial Complex.
Another of the witnesses, Elba Marina Rayo, works for a radio with a Sandinista profile and previously collaborated with Bishop Álvarez, according to the lawyer, who published photographs of the witnesses in which they appear with FSLN flags, with messages in favor of the Government or embracing Sandinista mayors.
FIRST BISHOP ARRESTED AND CHARGED IN NICARAGUA
On December 13, the Nicaraguan Public Ministry accused Bishop Álvarez and the exiled priest Uriel Antonio Vallejos for the alleged crimes of conspiracy and propagation of false news.
The bishop was presented without his religious clothing at the initial hearing, held at the Managua Judicial Complex, on January 10.
Álvarez Lagos, 56, is bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the diocese of Estelí, both in northern Nicaragua.
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He was abducted in the early hours of Friday, August 19, by police officers from the provincial episcopal palace along with four priests, two seminarians and a cameraman, after having been confined for 15 days.
The Nicaraguan Police, led by Francisco Díaz, President Ortega’s in-law, accuses the high-ranking officer of trying to “organize violent groups”, supposedly “with the purpose of destabilizing the State of Nicaragua and attacking the constitutional authorities.”
CONVULOUS YEAR FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Last October, Ortega attacked the Catholic Church led by Pope Francis, accusing it of not practicing democracy, of being a “dictatorship” and a “perfect tyranny” and of having used “its bishops in Nicaragua to carry out a coup of State” to his Government in the framework of the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018 over controversial reforms to social security.
In 2022, the Sandinista government expelled from the country the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag and 18 nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
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It has also imprisoned seven priests and two collaborators from the Matagalpa diocese, shut down nine Catholic radio stations and removed three Catholic channels from subscription television programming, and prevented processions and pilgrimages.
Relations between the Sandinistas and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 and a half years.
The Catholic community represents 58.5% of the 6.6 million inhabitants of Nicaragua, according to the last national census.
