The prisoners of conscience Yader Parajón and Yaser Vado were sentenced by the Ortega justice, this first of February, during the first day of the political trials in the prison facilities of “the new Chipote”, described as “illegal” by lawyers and specialists in Criminal law.
Parajón and Vado were found guilty of alleged “conspiracy to undermine national integrity to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan society”; and Vado was also convicted of “propagation of false news”, both crimes fabricated by the Ortega Prosecutor’s Office, which previously called “criminals and delinquents” prisoners of conscience, despite the fact that the law establishes the right to the presumption of innocence.
The marathon political trial took place under complete secrecy and without allowing the presence of their relatives, adding illegalities to this process, to which dozens of other prisoners of conscience will be subjected, according to the schedules established after, on January 24, Daniel Ortega ordered to reactivate the political trials that were “frozen” since October 2021, prior to the presidential votes, in which he was re-elected without political competition for a fourth consecutive term.
During the process, the Evaristo Vásquez Police Complex, of the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as “the new Chipote”, remained guarded by a contingent of about fifty riot police, armed with shields and batons, who were stationed along from the access to the main entrance.
CONFIDENTIAL He learned that the trial was in charge of Judge Ulisa Yahosca Tapia Silva and that the Prosecutor’s Office requested the maximum sentence of ten years for Parajón and fifteen years for Vado, pending the reading of the sentence for this Friday, February 4 at 8 in the morning.
Yader Parajón’s father: We know that “they are not going to take anyone out”
Parajón is a relative of Jimmy Parajón, assassinated in May 2018 during the Ortega massacre against the April Rebellion; and Vado is a university student expelled from UNAN-Managua and a member of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), arrested on the eve of the November 7 vote. Both become the first of more than sixty opponents and citizens imprisoned during the wave of repression carried out by the Police between the end of May and mid-November 2021, all accused of crimes fabricated by the Public Ministry, controlled by the ruling Sandinista Front. .
Miguel Parajón, Yader’s father, was not surprised by the guilty verdict against his son because “these people – the regime – are not going to get anyone out,” he said. However, he commented that Yader asked him, through his lawyer, to be strong and that he is hoping to get out through a negotiation between representatives of the opposition and the regime.
“They killed one of me and now they have the other in a cage,” lamented the father helplessly, and demanded the release of all political prisoners, “unjustly accused by laws invented to suit them – the regime -“, he claimed.
Parajón, 31, had already been imprisoned in 2019 for five days. Since his re-arrest in 2021, he was sent to a punishment cell in the DAJ.
Trials began today for opponents imprisoned in #Nicaragua, without judicial independence or legal bases. From the international community, we continue to constructively call for democratization and the release of political prisoners in the country #SOSNicaragua
– Antonia Urrejola (@totonia68) February 2, 2022
Prosecutor’s Office gathers accusations and duplicates hearing
Parajón and Vado were arrested two months apart. Parajón at the beginning of September, when he was trying to leave the country near the El Guasaule border post, in the west of the country; and Vado on the eve of the November 7 voting, described as an “electoral farce.”
However, on December 13, 2021, the Prosecutor’s Office requested an extension of the accusation in an initial hearing against both, despite the fact that Vado had already had a preliminary hearing and another initial, on November 26.
“If Yader was arrested before, why didn’t they charge them together? The rule would apply. They cannot come to do situations like the ones they did,” questioned a lawyer who is closely familiar with the processes against political prisoners.
“In any case, what could have been possible is an accumulation of cause, not an extension, and an extension that was also anomalous, was in violation of the constitutional norm, due process and the principle of legality, because they simply began to evacuate the exchange of information and evidence of the Public Ministry, without having given the defenses, a copy, “he explained.
In addition, Vado, 26, was first imprisoned at Police Station One, and on January 1 he was taken to the Jorge Navarro National Penitentiary System, known as “La Modelo”, in Tipitapa, from where this first of February to “the new Chipote” to stand trial.
Yaser Vado’s mother: “He is anguished for his freedom”
Senovia González, Vado’s mother, assured in an interview with Confidencial Radio, last Friday, that she has been able to visit her son, contrary to what has happened with the relatives of the inmates who are in “the new Chipote.”
According to González, her son is in good physical condition, but distressed because he demands his freedom.
Vado is also a member of the Renovating Democratic Union (Unimos, formerly MRS).
His mother questions the crimes filed against her son and assures that “they have nothing to accuse him of… my son is a student boy, and the only thing he has done is think differently and that is serious in this country,” he criticized.
Trials in “the new Chipote” violate the law
The political trials reactivated by orders of Daniel Ortega have been scheduled for the entire month of February against political prisoners, in the same facilities of “the new Chipote”, where dozens have been imprisoned since the end of May 2021.
However, carrying out these processes in the prison facilities constitutes one more of the illegalities of due process, according to the specialist in Criminal Law, María Asunción Moreno, in an interview with Tonight.
Lawyers who closely follow the cases against political prisoners agree with Moreno that judges cannot hold hearings outside the Judicial Complex, and that the exceptions established in article 121 of the Criminal Procedure Code only apply to “proceedings” that require the presence of the judge in his territorial jurisdiction.
However, they maintain that the exception does not apply in the case of these political trials, because neither the defense nor the Prosecutor’s Office have requested that they be held in “the new Chipote,” the lawyer said.
The right to defense is violated
Another of the illegalities is that the defenders of political prisoners have not accessed their files – completely or partially – and they have not been able to talk freely with prisoners of conscience.
A lawyer who monitors political trials assured CONFIDENTIAL that in these processes the exercise of technical and material defense is being violated, contrary to article 124 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CPP), which establishes that “the parties may obtain at their own expense simple copies of the judicial proceedings without any formality” .
Also, he added, article 34 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua is violated, which in its numeral 4, demands that “their intervention and due defense be guaranteed from the beginning of the process or procedure and to have adequate time and means for their defense ” .
In addition, this January 31, the Public Ministry violated the presumption of innocence of political prisoners, by calling them “criminals and delinquents” in a statement announcing the resumption of trials.
“These same criminals and delinquents have reoffended, attacking the rights of the Nicaraguan people and society, compromising peace and security. They are the same ones that promoted and directed the terrorist acts of the failed coup attempt of 2018, having paralyzed the country and created damage to the economy; They are the same ones that have caused so much pain and mourning in the Nicaraguan family because of the murders, torture and kidnappings,” he published.
Likewise, Ortega already condemned the political prisoners on November 8, in his most virulent speech against political prisoners, in which he called them “sons of bitches of imperialism.”
They demand the release of political prisoners
The Ortega regime keeps more than 170 Nicaraguans imprisoned, and more than thirty of them remain in “the new Chipote”, under isolation, in punishment cells, suffering physical and psychological torture, according to their relatives, who have only managed to visit them on five occasions during the more than six months of confinement.
Relatives of more than 30 political prisoners They demanded, at the end of January, the annulment of the trials and the unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience. In this way, they joined a previous statement, in which another group of relatives appealed for the support of “rulers, living forces of the nation and (Catholic) Church” so that they “lead” a “citizen unification process”, emphasizing that the release of prisoners of conscience would serve “as a kind of liberation shared by all Nicaraguans.”
After the communiqués, the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), which had been silent since September 2021, supported the demand for the freedom of prisoners of conscience, and announced its willingness in favor of a national dialogue “without preconditions”, in in the midst of the worst legitimacy crisis of the Ortega regime, which previously announced meetings with different economic sectors, without mentioning COSEP.
Among the 39 political prisoners captured between May 28 and October 21 (including four under house arrest), 29 are accused of alleged conspiracy to undermine; another seven are accused of money laundering and other crimes; two are investigated for violations of the “Law of Sovereignty” and one for abusive management and improper appropriation and retention.
The regime has used against the opposition the package of repressive laws that they approved between October 2020 and February 2021, being the most used until now, Law 1055 or Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination for Peace, better known as the “Sovereignty Law”, which facilitated the imprisonment of seven presidential candidates, as well as political, civic, student, peasant, former diplomat, journalist, activist, professional and human rights defender leaders.
He has also used the Special Cybercrime Law, known as the “Gag Law”approved on October 27, 2020, which penalizes whoever -according to the regime’s criteria- spreads “false news”.
Thus, the Prosecutor’s Office sentenced in January Donald Margarito Alvarenga Y Douglas Cerros Lanzas. Alvarenga was convicted of allegedly inciting “hate and violence” through Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages and for “subversion, disobedience and rebellion at the level of conspiracy to affect national integrity”; and Cerros for allegedly undermining national integrity and spreading false news.
