Monsignor Silvio Báez, auxiliary bishop of Managua, expressed his concern about the lack of information on the whereabouts of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez. The only reference that is available, according to what Daniel Ortega said, is that the bishop of Matagalpa would be held captive in the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, known as “La Modelo”, but since February 9 no one has seen him.
«I am very concerned about my brother Bishop Monsignor Rolando Álvarez. I fear that the dictatorship will be more merciless against him,” Báez wrote in his twitter account.
Likewise, the religious forced into exile wondered “where is Monsignor Álvarez and how is he?”, who has accumulated more than 200 days as a hostage of conscience of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
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Monsignor Silvio Báez also urged the international community to exert more pressure against the Ortega regime and thus achieve the release of the Bishop of Matagalpa.
At the beginning of February 2023, the regime tried to banish Monsignor Álvarez 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.
To this day, his family has not been able to see him, according to local media and human rights organizations that document the case of the first bishop imprisoned and convicted by the Nicaraguan dictatorship. Her sister has asked the justice of the regime to allow her to see her relative, but everything has been useless. He does not know where and how he is.
The digital media Dispatch 505 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.
Since his violent capture, on August 19, 2022, Bishop Álvarez remained in his family’s home in Managua. The prelate is part of the group of more than 30 political prisoners that the dictatorship maintains in its jails, most of them are confined in “La Modelo” in Tipitapa.
After resisting being banished, the bishop was taken to the Courts of Managua where he was subjected to an express summary trial. That same day, February 10, he was found guilty, sentenced to 26 years in prison, stripped of his nationality, and stripped 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.
