Vilma Esperanza Álvarez Lagos, sister of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, demands that the Nicaraguan authorities allow her to visit the religious leader, whom she has not seen since last February 9, when Daniel Ortega’s justice transferred the Bishop of Matagalpa to jail. La Modelo» from Tipitapa, as punishment for refusing to board a plane to be exiled.
In accordance with office 505the relative of the hostage of conscience filed a petition in the Courts of Managua on Thursday, March 2, in which he asks the Ortega judge Nadia Tardencilla to allow him to visit his brother and give him food, wherever he is, because he is not knows exactly where the bishop is.
The request appears consigned in the electronic system of causes of the capital’s Courts. Vilma Álvarez, 72, also went to obtain information on Monsignor Álvarez at the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), where they have told her that he should go to the Judiciary.
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For this reason, the sister of the prisoner of conscience went before Judge Tardencilla yesterday Thursday to give her information about the Bishop of Matagalpa, to tell her exactly where and how he is, and to make him a card so that he can visit him in equal conditions with the other inmates.
For their part, ecclesiastical sources revealed to office 505 that Vilma Álvarez has searched for the religious leader in the “El Nuevo Chipote” prison and in the National Penitentiary Center located in Tipitapa, but the jailers do not give her any reason or information about him.
The digital medium also revealed that recently, through leaks from inmates in “La Modelo”, Monsignor Álvarez was being sedated in jail, using substances that they probably introduced into food or drink.
The confinement of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez maintains a collective condemnation on social networks that demands his release. The bishop accumulates more than 200 days as a hostage of conscience of the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship.
On February 9, the regime tried to banish him from Nicaragua by sending him on a plane to the United States, but the prelate ruined the plan of the dictatorial couple and refused to board the flight. That act of resistance unleashed the rage of Daniel Ortega who ordered him locked up in the cells of “La Modelo.” Since his violent capture on August 19, 2021, Bishop Álvarez has remained in his family’s home in Managua.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) demands daily that the cardinal be released, along with the more than 30 political prisoners who are being held captive.
The Ortega justice found Monsignor Rolando Álvarez guilty for the alleged crimes of “treason” and sentenced him to 26 years in prison, stripped him of his nationality and stripped him of his civil and political rights for life.
The Bishop of Matagalpa is one of the most critical voices against the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship, the binomial that controls the strings of power in Nicaragua, a country mired in a sociopolitical, economic, and human rights crisis since 2018.
