The Nicaraguan Army reported on a agreement reached with the Honduran Armed Forces to exchange intelligence information and strengthen cooperation on the border of both countries. According to the statement released by the Nicaraguan institution, with this agreement they seek to “sustain strengthened cooperation mechanisms” to achieve “the common objectives in confronting the threats and risk factors that affect the border communities between both nations.”
They also add that with this signature they will “maintain the exchange of information and intelligence in real time”, without specifying what type of information would be provided by the binational military forces.
The agreement was signed between the commander-in-chief of the Nicaraguan Army, Army General Julio Cesar Aviles Castillo, and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, Vice Admiral Jose Jorge Fortin Aguilar.
Related news: Fourth ex-combatant of the Contras, assassinated in Honduras, in evident “political executions”
In addition, they reaffirmed “the importance of supporting the strengthening of confidence-building measures” between both military institutions, which they consider an “element of vital importance to develop the bilateral agenda on issues of common interest.”
This agreement between the Nicaraguan Army and the Honduran Armed Forces arises amid denunciations by Nicaraguan opponents, that it has been the members of the Military Corps who detain dissidents at the borders who are trying to escape from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Likewise, in recent weeks there have been murders, in Honduran territory, of former anti-Sandinista combatants who in recent years have declared themselves “up in arms” against Ortega.
Some of these murders have been recorded in areas such as the municipality of Trojes, in the department of El Paraíso, without the Honduran authorities providing an explanation until now, but opponents associate them with political executions, which could not occur if not with the participation and complicity of the Nicaraguan Army Intelligence Directorate, which in the interior of the country has also dedicated itself to annihilating supposedly rearmed groups for political purposes.
It was recently learned that, on June 19, 2023, the Nicaraguan opposition Santiago Rivera Mullera former Contra combatant, with the pseudonym “Tigre-León”, was assassinated in this Honduran town, which is on the border with Nicaragua.
Luis Fley, also a former commander of the Nicaraguan Resistance, told Article 66 that after 2018, at least four ex-combatants have been killed in that place. For Fley this means nothing more than a “political execution” against the ex-guerrillas who have rebelled against the Daniel Ortega regime.
The opponent pointed out that the border area of Nicaragua with Honduras, in the department of El Paraíso, is a place well known to the ex-contras, since they maintained several camps there during the war against the Sandinistas in the 1980s and for this reason, the ex-combatants take refuge in those places, especially in Trojes, however, after 2018, it has become an execution site for ex-Nicaraguan guerrillas.
On the other hand, this agreement between the armed forces of Nicaragua and Honduras demonstrates a greater rapprochement of the military institutions of the governments of Daniel Ortega and Xiomara Castro, despite the fact that neither of the two administrations has shown an evident rapprochement, as had the Sandinista regime with former (right-wing) president Juan Orlando Hernández.
