The justice of the Ortega regime sentenced the members of the political council of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), Róger Reyes and José Alejandro Quintanilla Hernández, known as Alex Hernández, to ten years in prison for the alleged crime of “conspiring to commit undermining national integrity”, in a hearing held at the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), El Chipote, confirmed the lawyer Henry López.
Hernández’s defender stressed that, in the sentencing act, Judge Félix Salmerón Moreno, of the Fifth Criminal District of Judgment, did not specify in which penitentiary system the political prisoners, who are detained in the cells of El Chipote, will serve their sentence.
“That omission implies that they will continue in the new Chipote”said López, who was forbidden by Salmerón to speak with his client. “As defenders, we asked the judge to allow us at least two, three minutes to speak with our defendants and they denied us. The continuity in the violation of the rights of the condemned is evident”, he maintained.
Reyes and Hernández were also disqualified from holding public office. Both were sentenced on March 1 by Salmerón Moreno, the same judge who sentenced seven opponents, including three former presidential candidates, to sentences of eight to thirteen years in prison, for allegedly “conspiracy”.
From February 1 to March 9, the Ortega justice system has sentenced more than thirty opponents out of some forty citizens captured in the political hunt for Daniel Ortega, which took place between May and November 2021, prior to an electoral process without political competition. .
In total, 21 prisoners of conscience, with sentences of between eight to thirteen years in prison, remain in El Chipote, nine are under house arrest and the rest were held in different prisons in the country.
López explained that the Prosecutor’s Office was unable to prove the commission of the crime by the accused. “In the trial the atypicality of the fact was demonstrated.”
They use videos of denunciation
Some videos that Reyes and Hernández recorded anticipating their arrest were used by the Public Ministry against the detainees.
“They do not demonstrate any type of conspiracy because Alex was arrested on August 23 and that video was published on the 25th. There is a quite distorted chronological order of the events, so the criminal type of conspiracy to undermine national security is not demonstrated. ”, expressed the defense.
The other videos are related to the electoral process in which the defendants denounced the irregularities, but did not ask for sanctions against Nicaragua.
“What they are doing is an exercise of their civil and political rights to participate in the electoral processes and to denounce (…) but they are not calling for military intervention, nothing like that,” the defender clarified. In the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office also presented as witnesses eight police officers, including an undercover agent, known as code one.
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