The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) warns that the life of the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, “is at risk” due to the lack of communication that exists on the part of the Daniel Ortega regime regarding the situation in which the Catholic hierarch is found.
“In the midst of the uncertainty and the state of terror in which Nicaragua lives day by day, we warn that Monsignor Álvarez is missing. More than a month ago he was wrongfully convicted. His life is in danger, we demand his freedom now, “says the defense organization through its campaign on social networks in which they reiterate the innocence of the religious leader.
Related news: Monsignor Rolando Álvarez has been locked up in “La Modelo” for a month
The bishop accumulates more than 200 days as a hostage of conscience of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. At the beginning of February the regime tried to banish him from Nicaragua by sending him on a plane to the United States, but the prelate ruined the plan of the dictatorial couple and refused to board the flight.
To this day, his family has not been able to see him, according to local media and human rights organizations that document the case of the first bishop imprisoned and convicted by the Nicaraguan dictatorship. Her sister has asked the justice of the regime to allow her to see her relative, but everything has been useless. He does not know where and how he is.
Currently, the only reference to the place where the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, could be held captive, is that he was locked up in the National Penitentiary System (SPN), known as “La Modelo”. The cardinal would be captive there since February 9.
On February 10, he was found guilty, sentenced to 26 years in prison, stripped of his nationality, and stripped of his civil and political rights for life.
The Bishop of Matagalpa is one of the most critical voices against the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship, the binomial that controls the strings of power in Nicaragua, a country mired in a sociopolitical, economic, and human rights crisis since 2018.
The organization also denounces that in Nicaragua there are still more than 30 citizens imprisoned by the dictatorship in the different prison systems of the country. “They are unjustly imprisoned in a permanent violation of their human rights. Freedom for all political prisoners”, reiterates Cenidh.
