The French Foreign Ministry has regretted “the lack of transparency” and secrecy in a trial against its citizens, Jeannine Horvilleur Cuadra, 63, and her daughter Ana Álvarez Horvilleur, 43, who this Thursday, January 26 They were sentenced to eight years in prison. for the alleged crimes of “conspiracy” and “disclosure of false news”.
Horvilleur Cuadra and Álvarez Horvilleur are mother and daughter and were detained by the Nicaraguan Police on September 13, 2022, when a group of officers were looking for their husband and father, respectively, the Nicaraguan Javier Alvarez Zamorawho managed to leave the country to request international protection.
Asked by a journalist about the sentence of the two citizens, the spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry, Agnès von der Mühll, said: “we regret the lack of transparency around this trial, since the hearings were held behind closed doors.”
“We deplore that, despite several requests to the Nicaraguan authoritiesour ambassador has not been allowed access to the trial”, he emphasized.
Mother and daughter are locked up in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), known as El Chipote. The trial was carried out with secrecy on January 17 and 18, 2023.
Along with two French-Nicaraguans, Félix Roiz Sotomayor, a Nicaraguan national, who is the husband of Ana Álvarez Horvilleur, was sentenced. The regime’s justice sentenced him to ten years in prison for the same crimes, of which the State of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan society appear as “victims or offended.”
The spokeswoman stressed that “we continue to be very concerned about the conditions of imprisonment and the state of health of our compatriots, in particular because, despite our repeated requests, our embassy has still not been able to have access to them, as established by the Convention of Vienna on Consular Relations of 1963”.
“The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, both in Managua and in Paris, is fully mobilized to provide them with all possible support,” he added.
