In an event classified as “monstrous” and “an atrocity”, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo recently carried out the kidnapping and exile of an entire family from San Rafael del Sur, including an 11-year-old boy, who along with his sister, his mother and his father, the journalist and businessman Henry Briceño, were expelled to Costa Rica, and then all their assets were confiscated.
Last Sunday, November 24, at around 2:30 in the afternoon, four police patrols under the command of the Chief of Police in the municipality of San Rafael del Sur, Senior Commissioner Lázaro Clemente Quintanilla Álvarez, arrived at the house of the veteran journalist to kidnap him along with his entire family, in an action only comparable to the kidnappings and exiles carried out by Adolf Hitler against the Jewish population in Germany during the years of the Second World War.
The story was detailed by Briceño himself to journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, in an interview for one of the Confidencial media programs.
The exiled journalist and businessman has described as monstrous the action of the dictatorship in having ordered the exile of his son, who was only 11 years old, and then confiscated his assets that had already been inherited by his father during his lifetime.
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According to the communicator, now from his exile in Costa Rica, the four police patrols that arrived at his house transported at least 20 police officers, who with luxury of violence and amid inappropriate shouts and insults, warned the family to leave the house and board the vehicles because they were detained and would be “deported.” The justification was because, supposedly, Briceño was “leader of the opposition in San Rafael del Sur.”
“The chief commissioner was the one who personally questioned me and told me: ‘Look, you are the leader of this opposition here and therefore you are detained from this moment on and are going to be exiled,'” the journalist narrated.
When Briceño tried to persuade the Ortega police chief to allow him to speak with his wife and children and even search for their passports, he was not allowed. “Come on, don’t delay, sons of p…”, shouted the henchmen of the regime.
They were not allowed to take anything out of the house. They forced them to get into the vehicles, the mother and daughter in one truck and Briceño and the 11-year-old boy in another and they immediately began the march towards exile, forced to abandon an entire life in San Rafael del Sur and their assets acquired during years of work.
During the march, the journalist managed to find out that the operation was being personally directed by telephone by the advisory minister on security issues, retired and reinstated general commissioner, Horacio Rocha (Rochón), who has converted, by orders of the tyrants Ortega and Murillo, in the official “banisher” of the dictatorship.
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“Is the objective under control,” Rochón asked on the phone, and immediately ordered that the operation continue as planned and that he be informed during the journey.
Until that moment, Briceño did not know where they were being taken, but when he saw that they came out onto the Panamericana Sur highway, near the municipality of El Crucero, they were intercepted by a liaison from Managua who gave them “a package” and they headed toward the south, then he felt that exile was coming upon them.
Since 2012, the journalist had legally transferred those properties to his family, anticipating actions like these.
First child exiled
Briceño insists on denouncing that they had been besieged for months, they were harassed, they were forced to report each of their movements outside their home, even to go shopping or to the doctor, and since they were not able to intimidate them, the regime resorted to “a monstrosity.” » against his family.
«We were willing to resist, they couldn’t push us away that way and they chose to take over our residence and remove us in a rude and abusive way. They did not take into consideration that they exiled an 11-year-old child, it is the first time in the history of this dictatorial regime that they exiled a minor, 11 years old, and I am not going to forgive Ortega and Murillo for that, that What are they doing to us, leaving us on the street, here in San José. “We came practically wearing the clothes that the eastern commissioner of San Rafael del Sur named Lázaro Clemente Quintanilla took us out with,” the journalist denounced forcefully.
Army participates in exile operation
The exiled communicator and businessman said that once they arrived in the department of Rivas, the police patrols handed them over to police officers in that department, who, once they had transferred them from vehicles, drove them to the border with Costa Rica where they arrived. around 7:40 at night.
At that point they contacted Rochón, who coldly ordered that they be handed over to the Army in the border mountain. “You already know where they are going to leave you,” ordered Ortega’s repressive ancestor.
In this way, according to Briceño, the police vehicles headed down a mountain road until they saw Army troops who, due to their deployment and disposition, were awaiting their arrival.
«They entered a road parallel to the border of Peñas Blancas, they traveled approximately a couple of kilometers through pure mountain. The biggest surprise is that with the light from the cars we saw a group of Army personnel and that’s as far as we got, to the group of soldiers. The first thing I thought was that they were going to kill us because it was a mountain,” says the father of the family, remembering the anguish he experienced with his relatives.
Once they were ordered to get off the vehicles, already in the hands of the soldiers, one of them opened a “gate” in a fence and directed them to cross it.
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After walking about eight meters towards the mountain they are told to form a line, at that moment they finally find out what the package that the liaison delivered in El Crucero contained: they were passports prepared that same day in the name of each of them. , they gave them to them, they took photos and videos.
Once they were given their new travel documents and all the soldiers wanted to take as many photos and videos as they wanted, in the most inhumane way they were forced to start a march, alone, in the middle of the darkness of that mountain, in a narrow path full of mud and humidity, falling sometimes until they reached Costa Rican territory where they were intercepted by border security agents of that country.
Once in the hands of the Costa Rican authorities, according to Briceño, they were treated humanely, they were given food and transported to the capital of that country to begin their procedures as refugees and “a new life” in exile.
