The Nicaraguan Judiciary ratified the guilty verdicts and sentences of between 8 and 13 years in prison against a group of 13 political prisoners and critics of the Daniel Ortega dictatorship, reported the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh).
“In the Courts of Appeals, the appeals have been declared inadmissible, confirming the unjust convictions,” reported the Cenidh, which described the decision of the Nicaraguan Justice as “farce and judicial persecution.”
The so-called “political prisoners” had been found guilty of crimes considered “treason against the fatherland” and other economic crimes, at the beginning of this year, in trials that the Cenidh and similar organizations described as “null” because they were allegedly held outside the the law, behind closed doors inside a prison, without following due process, and without the accused having access to their defenses or evidence.
“When the appeals are rejected, it is necessary that the lawyers, within a period of ten days, have to file an appeal, where the Supreme Court of Justice will close the cycle of unlimited repression and complicity that exists between the Ortega Murillo regime and the Judiciary,” said Cenidh.
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The convicts whose sentences were confirmed are former presidential candidates Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro and Miguel Mora, former deputy foreign ministers José Pallais and Víctor Hugo Tinoco, opposition leaders Ana Margarita Vijil, Tamara Dávila and Violeta Granera, peasant leaders Medardo Mairena and Pedro Mena, businessman José Adán Aguerri, and sports journalist Miguel Mendoza.
The 13 were captured in 2021, in the midst of a wave of arrests against opponents, critics of the Government of Daniel Ortega, and independent professionals, prior to the elections of last November 7, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison.
The Cenidh blamed the Ortega dictatorship and Murillo for making the decisions of the Judiciary from his mansion, located in the residential area of El Carmen, in western Managua.
“There is no doubt that the Judiciary is a shame, they have become ‘machotoros’ obedient to the dictates of El Carmen. They do not analyze, they do not study the resources that are filed, they only know how to confirm the spurious sentences”, highlighted the Cenidh.
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), more than 180 people remain in Nicaraguan prisons as “political prisoners.”
The deprivation of liberty for political reasons, pointed out by humanitarian organizations, was accentuated in 2018, when Nicaraguans came out en masse to protest against Ortega, and were reduced with armed attacks.
The IACHR assures that at least 355 people died in these protests. The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, who maintains that it was a “failed coup,” has admitted on different occasions the death of 200 Nicaraguans.
