Four years of questions have tormented María José Da Costa, a 59-year-old retired Brazilian nurse, about the state of impunity in her claim for justice. In three months, it will be 48 months since the loss of her daughter Rayneia Gabrielle Da Acosta Lima Rocha, the medical student murdered andn the context of the protests in Nicaragua in 2018.
If she had Daniel Ortega in front of her now, she says she would tell him first: “I want to know who the real shooter was.” She then insists: “I would like answers. Why don’t they let lawyers work? They have all had to leave the country in fear because they have been threatened.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), attached to the Organization of American States (OAS), asked the Ortega regime on April 4 for its observations on the mother’s complaint, according to official documentation to which it had access. CONFIDENTIAL. The deadline for responding is three months and at most it can be four.
The IACHR’s request is part of a technical process known aseither “case request”, in which the international instance evaluates human rights violations. After listening to the defendant, he prepares a substantive report that he can send if he finds merit to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IA Court), whose headquarters are in San José, Costa Rica.
According to the lawyer of the victim’s mother, Boanerges Fornos, who acts on behalf of the independent group Acción Penal, this process can take years.
Fornos explains that the IACHR in this April communication asks the State to express itself in relation to the lack of access to justice and the protection of the lives of citizens, a responsibility of the State.
“The State is probably going to say that the right to access to justice was guaranteed. That there was a person investigated, who was accused, who admitted the facts (Pierson Gutiérrez), but on the occasion of the amnesty law this person was benefited, although we know that he should not have been benefited, ”explains Fornos.
The review of Rayneia’s file, carried out by the group of independent lawyers led by Fornos, confirms that the regime protected Gutiérrez.
Besides: “Brazil has to put even more pressure” on Daniel Ortega
Fornos: This is how the judiciary manufactured impunity
According to the list of facts, which can be read in the court ruling, the murder occurred at 11:30 p.m. on July 23, 2018. The medical student was 31 years old at the time of her death.
She was an internist at the Carlos Roberto Huembes hospital, she was returning home in her silver vehicle, plates M170620, when she was murdered in the Lomas de Monserrat sector, a security zone. close to the residence of the FSLN treasurer, Francisco López Centenolocated one kilometer from where the students were standing up in protest against Ortega.
The detainee was Pierson Adán Gutiérrez Solís, 42, who was seized with an M4-caliber carbine. Nine days after the crime he was brought before the judge. On August 1, 2018, he was charged, that day the defendant admitted the facts during the preliminary hearing and was also sentenced to 15 years thanks to a lightning-fast sentence.
The criminal Fornos questioned from the same accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office that charged Gutiérrez with homicide and not with murder as appropriate. Secondly, he was also held responsible for illegal possession of firearms, when it was a weapon of restricted use by the security forces, which also benefited him with lesser penalties.
“It is the typical example of impunity using the justice system,” says Fornos, who describes this action as fraudulent, because the rapid admission of the facts fulfilled the strategy of preventing the State’s investigative proceedings from being known, which could not be done. and to identify other responsible parties.
According to Fornos, the assistant prosecutor Lenín Castellón justified the alleged perpetrator of the crime during the appeal, after imposing a minimum sentence for each crime attributed in the sentence. Finally, a year after the assassination, Gutiérrez benefited from the amnesty law approved by the National Assembly under Ortega’s control.
“He is the only paramilitary that we know of who came to trial. You have to see the different treatment: he was with a private lawyer, he was allowed to be in the hearing, private hearings were held to protect them, he was never publicly exposed as was the case with opponents of the regime, so the judicial apparatus worked to guarantee impunity and the protection of this person. The State must be held accountable for the murder of this young woman,” Fornos demanded.
The pain of a mother: “I wish I had her by my side”
For María José Da Costa, the wait for justice has been long. She continues to question the lack of answers from the Nicaraguan Police, and each day that passes has turned into an endless wait for the truth.
“I live every day as if it were that day. Every day I see the photos, when I was with her co-workers, I wish I had her by my side. I miss her,” Da Costa says over the phone.
The mother remembers that she saw her daughter’s body up to 12 days after she was murdered. As a child, the young woman wanted to study medicine and she went to Nicaragua to fulfill a dream, but unfortunately she returned to Brazil in a coffin.
He studied medicine for six years in Nicaragua, in 2017 he met a boy who is the son of a government official, Harnet Nathan Lara Moraga, with whom he fell in love and who came the day of the crime in another car a short distance away.
Lara Moraga is the son of Nicaragua’s most recent alternate delegate to the OAS, Iván Lara Palacios, known for persecuting former President Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2001) for corruption. In those turns that he gives life, the former president is now a political ally of Ortega and Lara ended up becoming an official.
The IACHR’s request comes at the worst moment in the regime’s relations with the OAS, which ordered the police takeover of the headquarters in Managua on Sunday, April 24, after ratifying the will to leave the regional organization, to which its authorities consider a colonialist instrument.
According to Da Costa, the young Lara Moraga is a direct witness to his daughter’s crime, he was threatened and his family had to take him out of Nicaragua to guarantee his safety.
“He is the only person who knows who killed my daughter, he gave her first aid (before taking her to the hospital). I want the real shooter, he cut a life that would have saved many,” she said. For her, “the person they said was in prison, never went to jail.”
