Argentine lawyer Darío Richarte, professor of Human Rights and International Criminal Law, who has led, together with a group of criminal lawyers—since October 2022—an accusation against the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo and 30 other officials, before the National Criminal Court. and Correctional Facility number four of the Judiciary based in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, reported through their social networks that they integrated a “very important test” in the process.
«Today we have introduced a very important test: the confession of Francisco Díaz. (…) In these statements, the head of the Nicaraguan National Police attributed direct responsibility to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as the authors of the orders to carry out the repression of the social demands of 2018,” Richarte indicated in his X account.
In addition, he questioned whether the first commissioner Francisco Díaz “Would he have wanted with these statements to accumulate evidence that in the future would mitigate his criminal responsibility?” But, he then clarified that he does not believe that the accomplice of the Ortega dictatorship can achieve this.
The statements to which the Argentine lawyer referred were those that the Chief of Police and father-in-law of Ortega and Murillo, Francisco Díaz, offered on October 10 to the Russian news network RT.
Francisco Díaz: “We comply with the order that our president gave us”
Díaz, in said interview, in addition to stating that the Police is “Sandinista” and that its members are “militants of the Sandinista National Liberation Front,” assured that in 2018, in the context of the social protests that the Ortega Police repressed with brutality, they only complied with the order of the “supreme chief” of the Police, that is, of the dictator Daniel Ortega.
«We comply with the order given to us by our President of the Republic, our supreme leader, (Daniel Ortega). The order was from our supreme leader, to reconcentrate, until – as a result of them – the dialogue did not work, due to the vandalism, coup position of these people, (then) we were given the order to guarantee peace, restore peace in the country, security, tranquility and that Nicaraguan families could continue working in peace and with joy,” said Díaz when referring to the way in which they cleared, with bullets, the roadblocks that the Nicaraguan population erected in protest against the Ortega regime.
In addition, he reiterated the speech of the Sandinista dictatorship related to the social protests being an alleged attempted coup d’état. «In 2018, as is known, the attempted coup d’état, which was planned, financed and organized by the United States, with its internal allies, a sector of the Catholic Church, businessmen, NGOs, in collusion with the States United of America, we were attacked by these groups of coup plotters, terrorists, and vandals. They destroyed dozens of our police units, they set fire to our transportation units (…) and the most precious thing, our lives, they murdered 22 police officers (…) that is in terms of the Police, but at the national level they murdered dozens of our Sandinista comrades . They burned their houses just for being Sandinistas, hospitals, health centers, buses, mayor’s offices, institutions of our good government. “These people destroyed the country’s economy,” said the first commissioner of the Police.
Lawyer Salvador Marenco, master in Public Law and specialist in Amparo and Constitutional Procedure, and defender of the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective, in an interview with Article 66said that Díaz’s statements show “a unfolding of reality, a constant denial of the truth and the serious events that have happened in Nicaragua.”
«They (the police officers) were detained in three months of 2018, when roadblocks were established in protest and as a form of protection of the civilian population against the attacks of the National Police and its parastatal agents, and within that context it provides some data . However, it ignores providing data on the more than 800 thousand Nicaraguans who have left the country as a result of the repression, the more than 300 deaths who were deprived of their lives as a result of state and parastatal repression, and all the overwhelming reports from Acnudh, Ghren, about the human rights violations that have been committed, and continue to be committed in Nicaragua,” said the Collective defender.
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The Nicaraguan lawyer, prior to Richarte’s warning about the use of Díaz’s statements as evidence in the trial being carried out against the dictators and 30 other officials, indicated that the words of the first commissioner and director of the National Police, indeed, could “be used in a process for crimes against humanity,” although, he highlighted that “before that declaration, the issue of the chain of command was extremely clear, constitutionally since 2014, to subdue the National Police and position himself as chief.” supreme of the Police, Ortega reformed the Constitution.
He also pointed out that, although Díaz spoke about the fact that peace was restored in Nicaragua, in the country “peace has not been restored, on the contrary, a de facto police system has been established in which all police forces have been suspended.” rights of Nicaraguans. “A system in which people live in terror due to illegal detentions, forced disappearances, torture, exile, constant political persecution, among other situations.”
