Opponents and human rights defenders condemned the arrest against the father Jaime Ivan Montesinos Willow, 61 years old, parish priest of the San Juan Pablo Segundo church, in Villa Chagüitillo, in the municipality of Sébaco, in the Diocese of Matagalpa.
In the official statement of the Police, published this Thursday, May 25, the religious is accused of “committing acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the nation”, the same crime for which he has accused other priests and opponents.
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Following these remarks, the Nicaraguan University Alliance (STILL) He expressed that the “arbitrary detention of the priest Jaime Montesinos is another cowardly act of the Ortega dictatorship that persecutes the Church and fears its message of hope.”
“Faith is the voice of the people and it will not be silenced. Enough of religious persecution!” added the student group, through its Twitter account.
For his part, the human rights defender and former secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Paulo Abrão recalled that with this new arrest, the dictatorship continues with “repression without brakes in #Nicaraguaagainst the priests of the Catholic Church».
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He also said that after the kidnapping of the religious became known, the Ortega Police, “at the service of their masters, slander and invent to try to wash face of their misdeeds.”
«We condemn these excessive attacks against the Catholic Church; We condemn these slanders and demand respect for the physical integrity and the immediate release of Father Jaime —Montesinos—, as well as that of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez and all political hostages,” he demanded.
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In press release 009-2023, the police institution stated that on the night of Tuesday, May 23, 2023, in the department of Boaco, municipality of San José de los Remates, Father Montesinos Sauceda was arrested, who supposedly “had was in a suspicious attitude, intoxicated and in the company of a young woman, aboard the White Toyota Hilux van (…) parked on the side of the road”, trying to sow doubts about the morality of the religious, although in the publication that is not referred to as a crime, but as an attempt to undermine the integrity of the priest.
With the arrest of Father Montesinos, the Nicaraguan dictatorship raises the number of kidnapped religious to four. Besides the priests Pastor Eugenio Rodriguez Benavides and Leonardo Guevara Gutierrez, those he captured, transferred them to Managua and subjected them to an “investigation” for the management of the extinct Caritas, but later they were released “under investigation”.
