The recent arrest of General Commissioner Adolfo Marenco Koreaformer deputy director of the National Police, reveals “fissures” in the circle of “trust and loyalty” of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, valued sociologist Elvira Cuadra, an expert in security issues.
For the researcher, the imprisonment of Marenco in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as El Chipote, “marks a milestone” in the relationship between the presidential couple and the Police, since it warns the other police commanders that, what happened with the former deputy director, “it can happen to anyone”.
Marenco was director of investigation and intelligence for the Police and was part of Murillo’s inner circle and the security adviser Nestor Moncada Lau. He was considered one of the pillars of the regime’s political espionage. However, last November, Ortega sent the general commissioner into retirement and a few days ago imprisoned him in El Chipote, where he holds more than twenty political prisoners kidnapped.
“(Marenco’s arrest) is very significant, because it shows that this circle of trust has cracks. In addition, there is discomfort, even within the Police itself,” Cuadra commented in an interview with the program Tonight.
He pointed out that “the impact (within the Police) is strong because this type of situation hits the morale of the institution. Although Marenco did not have any direct relationship with the rest of the troops, particularly with those on the front line”.
“Marenco is a key person because he handled information from one of the most sensitive areas of the Police, which has to do with the whole issue of investigations and intelligence, which includes political surveillance, economic investigations, organized crime, drug trafficking,” commented the expert.
According to a journalistic profile of CONFIDENTIAL, Marenco Corea was the “espionage chief of the repression” in Nicaragua who operated “in the shadows” and “the guardian of the secrets of the presidential couple.”
“He is not only a person who handles information from the Police, but from the different institutions and parallel bodies that have actively participated in this policy of repression,” Cuadra highlighted.
The message to the other police chiefs
The deputy director of the Police is the first high-level chief to fall from his position and be imprisoned by the Ortega dictatorship. Police sources have detailed CONFIDENTIAL and other national media that Marenco was detained in a house in Managua, where he was under de facto house arrest after he was denounced, by a faction of the regime’s leadership, of alleged acts of corruption and unauthorized management of private businesses.
In police circles, there are two versions that explain the imprisonment. One is that it was to “shut him up” because they accuse him of wanting to flee the country, with which Ortega’s circle would be carrying out a “kind of preventive coup”, the sources assured.
The other is that he refused to continue working for the Ortega-Murillos, which irritated the presidential couple. Marenco did not accept his transfer on secondment to the Institute for Security and Human Development (ISSDHU), which administers the pensions of the Police and other dependencies of the Ministry of the Interior.
“There is no clarity about the reasons that caused, first, the withdrawal of Marenco, and now his imprisonment. This has to do with the way in which this type of information is handled by the Government”, highlighted Cuadra.
He explained that “if it is true that Marenco was dismissed and detained for participating in illegal businesses; then, the others (police chiefs), who have maintained their loyalty to the regime because of perks, influence peddling and the permission they have been given to participate in similar businesses, already know that (the same thing) can happen to them at any time. moment”.
The researcher pointed out that the police commanders “do not know exactly what the limit is or how far they can go (with their illegal businesses), because corruption is rooted in the institution and also in the practices of the entire Ortega-Murillo system.”
“That line or that limit (of corruption) is optional, depending on what Ortega and Murillo decide. So, at any time it can be their turn (police chiefs)”, stressed the specialist.
“Everyone is treated as suspect”
The dismissal and arrest of Marenco has coincided with the promotion of his deputy in the Intelligence Directorate, Commissioner General Zhukov Serrano Pérezwho last November was appointed deputy director of the Police.
In addition, Ortega raised the profile of the retired general commissioner of the Police, Horacio Rocha López, by appointing him as the president’s advisory minister on Security Affairs. With this decision, Rocha became the highest authority before the Presidency on security issues, and can participate in the meetings of the Council of Ministers, where current issues in the country are addressed and is chaired by Vice President Murillo.
For Cuadra, these movements in the police leadership respond to “a reconfiguration of the closest circle of trust and loyalty of the Ortega-Murillo.”
He said that these “movements” generally occur in regimes, such as Ortega’s, when they face or are in progress “an accelerated process of internal erosion of its base of support”.
“We have learned of the large number of people who have left the country, public officials, not only at the grassroots level, but also at a high level. Those who hold an important position have not left because they cannot, because they are highly monitored or their passports have been taken away, ”he said.
“There are internal discomforts, there are fissures and there is a state of permanent surveillance (in the Ortega-Murillo circle), where practically everyone is treated as suspectand there is no longer any level of certainty for those who are closest to them,” he said.
“Everyone is suspicious, they can no longer sleep peacefully, they don’t know when they can knock on the door with a situation similar to that of Marenco,” he warned.
