Christiana Chamorro Barrios, former president of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCh) accused of alleged money laundering by the Daniel Ortega regimewill be the last presidential candidate to be convicted by the regime’s justice system, after nine and a half months of repression to cancel the elections and close democratic spaces in Nicaragua.
“They started with Cristiana and it turns out that she is the last one they are judging. This is a way to prolong her agony, but in addition to prolonging the persecution and derision that they are doing with her, it is not a legal action. Handcuffs are put on those who are fleeing to capture them. That has no name,” said human rights defender Vilma Núñez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh).
With the announced conviction of Chamorro Barrios, the script written by Daniel Ortega will be fulfilled, who one day after proclaiming himself the winner in the November 7 elections, without political competition with the seven imprisoned pre-candidates, proclaimed that all of them, “the sons of bitches of the imperialism”, they would be condemned as “criminals”.
The FSLN judicial machinery has so far imposed sentences on five former presidential candidates: thirteen years in prison for Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena, Juan Sebastian Chamorro and Felix Maradiaga; nine to Arturo Cruzand Noel Vidaurre has already been sentenced, but the years in prison are still pending, although he – like Cristiana Chamorro – is under house arrest.
The sentences against the pre-candidates include legal prohibitions to hold public office, with which Ortega intends to permanently inhibit them in the next election cycles.
February and the first days of March have been intense for the relatives of the political prisoners, because the dictatorship has sentenced 32 opponents.
“It is cruelty without limits, I had never seen it, I lived through the Somoza dictatorship and I never saw anything like it. They have family members and people in general in anxiety, because we don’t know what comes after this. Will he be able to stay in power until 2027 with full prisons? Could it be that (Ortega) believes that the adults are going to survive the years of confinement?” Vilma Núñez questioned.
The judicial punishments have been carried out with the complicity of some 15 officials, including judges, police officers and prosecutors who have complied with the political orders issued from El Carmen (presidential residence and office) and who, according to lawyers consulted, commit crimes of malfeasance and that of torture against humanity.
Félix Ernesto Salmerón, of the Fifth District Trial Court, was the one who sentenced Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Maradiaga and Cruz; Judge Ulisa Yahoska Tapia did it with Vidaurre, Judge Ángel Jeancarlos Fernández González with Mairena, and Judge Nadia Camila Tardencilla was furious with Mora, according to the records kept by CONFIDENTIAL.
The fabrication of the case of the FVBCh
The political process reactivated against Cristiana Chamorro, her brother, the former deputy Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios, the former administrative officials Marcos Fletes and Walter Gómez, and the driver Pedro Vásquez began this Thursday, after a stage of exchanging evidence in which Judge Luden Quiroz was biased in favor of the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Police forced the former president of the Foundation, who is at home under house arrest, to dress in the blue uniform of political prisoners at the first hearing, which was also characterized by a high police presence in the prison of “El Chipote” in Managua.
?We condemn cruelty against the political prisoner @chamorrocris, was taken from her home to Chipote, where they put her in a cell, forced her to wear a blue uniform and put plastic handcuffs on her. This is how they presented it in the judicial farce. pic.twitter.com/A5IPQKRqHG
— Cenidh (@cenidh) March 3, 2022
The first session takes place with the expiration of Judge Quiroz’s deadline for issuing a sentence for two months, which causes the process to die, according to lawyers consulted, and also the deterioration of the health of those detained in the case of the FVBCh who are currently in “El Chipote”.
The main underlying question in this case is that the State accuses money laundering, forcing itself to prove the illicit origin of the funds, when the donors have declared that they have no evidence of the alleged illegality.
Based on a report from the Ministry of the Interior, the Prosecutor’s Office accuses the FVBCh of diverting funds between 2015 and 2021 from its media program for organizations and journalists who allegedly sought to “destabilize” the regime.
In 2018, when thousands of citizens called for his resignation, the Ortega regime accused the opposition of perpetrating a coup. However, international organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented the excessive use of force against protesters at the hands of State forces. , even committing crimes against humanity.
Open processes in Managua against opponents have been compared by the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación with those carried out in Moscow in the years of Stalin. However, unlike those cases, in which the accused ended up admitting their guilt to try to lessen the sentence even though they were later killed, heOpponents of Ortega continue to maintain their innocence and civic struggle and they have become an example of courage in frank defiance of the dictatorship.
“It is live terror, the effort is to sow fear in society,” added Núñez.
