The opposition, lawyer and member of the Civic Alliance, María Asunción Moreno, celebrates a year in exile after her name appeared as a possible candidate for the Presidency of Nicaragua and snatch Daniel Ortega as head of state.
Moreno’s intentions became known in the midst of the intense hunt for opponents that Ortega undertook since June 2021, when he ordered the capture of the main leaders of the various political groups in the country. The academic had to go into exile.
On July 10, 2021, the Civic Alliance reported that Moreno would be proposed as a presidential candidate for the Alianza Ciudadanos por la Libertad. From that day on, she started the persecution against her.
“Faced with harassment, persecution and the threat of my imprisonment by the Ortega Murillo dictatorship, I have decided to leave the country, I believe that from the harsh exile, I will be able to contribute more than from the isolation and solitary confinement to which our prisoners are subjected. Politicians,” Moreno reported on Twitter on July 25, 2021.
Related news: María Asunción Moreno goes into exile before “threat of being imprisoned”
As of that date, Moreno had received a summons to go to the Public Ministry to testify, they even had a “forced driving” order. Hours after that appointment, the Police of the Ortega-Murillo regime raided her home, but she was no longer there.
The police authorities, loyal to the dictatorship, seized a vehicle with circulation and a driver’s license. In August of last year, when Moreno was in exile, the Police asked to lift banking secrecy and freeze the opposition’s accounts. The justification of the Police is that, at that time, they carried out “investigative proceedings” for the alleged crimes of money laundering, goods and assets, provocation, proposition and conspiracy to undermine national integrity to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua.
The presidential candidate was called as a “witness” and, according to a judicial official letter, she was “investigated” for the same crimes charged to political prisoners Cristiana Chamorro and Juan Sebastián Chamorro, former directors of the organizations that were investigated by the Ortega-Murillo regime: Funides and the Violeta Barrios Foundation.
“A year later, we continue to see illegal detentions and thousands of Nicaraguans forced into exile. However, the fight for the freedom of #Nicaragua is still alive, it is enough to see the courage and dignity of the PP (political prisoners) before their executioners », Moreno wrote this day on his Twitter account.
By announcing Moreno as a possible candidate for the Presidency, Ortega had already arrested the seven pre-candidates who had expressed their intentions to participate in the general elections of 2021. The electoral process was considered illegitimate by more than 40 countries and was rejected by the international community.
“We have not been able to “stop the illegal detentions”, but our fight is strengthened by the leadership that continues to resist in the prisons and that has not been able to break #OrtegaMurillo despite the cruel and inhuman treatment suffered by the PP (political prisoners) in Nicaragua », he assured.
