Various reports from international organizations have concluded that the Nicaraguan judiciary lacks independence. They point out that he is subject to and responds to the interests of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, the dictatorial couple that became President of the Republic.
For the former judicial official Yader Morazán, the Judiciary is the “golden institution” that the dictator has used to crush opponents. “The repression in Nicaragua rests on the prosecution of the opposition class,” he said. More than 400 people have been sentenced by Ortega judges.
The 2022 annual report on Nicaragua, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), indicates that there is a “lack of independence of the Judiciary.”
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In addition, it observes that “patterns of criminalization of political opponents persist, serious violations of the guarantees of due process, arbitrary arrests and the use of deprivation of liberty to repress and maintain a climate of fear in the population.”
Also, what this situation shows is that the functioning of the justice system is “subject to the will of the government to a clear detriment of the rule of law and democracy.”
In September 2022, the European Parliament approved a resolution on the situation in Nicaragua, in the document they indicate that the illegitimate judicial sentences confirm the repressive drift of the Nicaraguan regime “with the clear connivance of the Judiciary”, aimed at silencing dissidents.
The lack of separation of powers and the total control of the institutions by the regime has led to the domination of the Judiciary and the Prosecutor’s Office at the will of the regime, “in order to establish a dictatorship,” the text states. In addition, they consider that “judges have become a repressive arm responsible for human rights violations.”
“Complicit” judicial system
The lawyer and defender of political prisoners Yonarqui Martínez explained to Article 66 that Nicaragua has a “degraded, corrupt, lacking credibility and transparency” judicial system that is full of officials “appointed by finger, awarded for carrying out actions against opponents.”
“This is not from 2018, let’s remember countless people who were persecuted, prosecuted, and sentenced with the help of corrupt judges and prosecutors in years prior to 2018. It is a repressive body, complicit in crimes against innocents.”
Martínez affirmed that in these five years the Judiciary has shown a total lack of independence in its actions. This is due, according to the jurist, to being controlled by the Executive and consequently they hand down “illegitimate sentences against innocent opponents. Every day there is more impunity and less justice. Innocents are imprisoned and criminals are released.
The unusual sentence of 216 years in prison
The peasant leader Medardo Mairena was sentenced to 216 years in prison by Judge Edgard Altamirano in mid-February 2019. The court determined that the opponent was responsible for a string of crimes, his lawyer denounced irregularities in the process.
Mairena was sentenced to 150 years in prison for the murder of five police officers in Morrito, Río San Juan. In the sentence, Judge Altamirano determined that Mairena was the “intellectual author” of the death of the officers.
He was also sentenced to 30 years for 10 kidnappings that the Prosecutor’s Office attributed to him, also as the intellectual author. For the crime of terrorism, the court sentenced him to 16 years in prison, 11 more years for organized crime, seven for aggravated robbery and two more years for aggravated damage.
Pedro Mena, another peasant leader, was accused along with Mairena and the same court sentenced him to 210 years in prison. The two highest and most unusual sentences that the judges of the Ortega dictatorship have imposed in the last five years.
Mairena was released under an Amnesty Law in June 2019. He was arrested again in 2021 and sentenced to 13 years in prison for the alleged crime of “undermining national integrity.” On April 9, he was released again and exiled to the United States.
The phases of the criminalization of opponents
Lawyer Yader Morazán told this media outlet that, from April 2018 to date, he has managed to identify four phases, with specific parameters, of the judicial criminalization of opposition leaders.
The first phase began, according to Morazán, from April 2018 to February 2019. During this period, the lowest social class in socioeconomic terms, the leaders of the roadblocks, was arrested and the social base was dismantled. This phase is marked by accusations of terrorism, organized crimes and obstruction of functions. Lawyers could access the trial and the files.
The second phase begins from the second dialogue (first quarter 2019) when the justice system no longer heard about cases of terrorism and began to create crimes of possession of weapons or drugs. Here, criminal proceedings are also extended to the departments and are decentralized from Managua.
secret hearings
The third phase is registered from May 2021 until the end of 2022: in that pre-electoral period the stop was raised and social and opposition leaders are imprisoned, including presidential candidates. The Cybercrimes Law and the Sovereignty Law were approved.
“It is characterized by the concealment of the accused’s file, the hearings and the inmates were not exhibited, they were subjected to forced disappearance that not even their family knew where they were,” he said.
“In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office played a more active role, citing interviews with journalists, among others. Defense lawyers for political prisoners such as María Oviedo and Roger Reyes were also persecuted,” he added.
The fourth phase is marked by the persecution of the clergy of the Catholic Church, according to the lawyer. Totally flawed processes are registered and without access to the accusation and the file. “The Judiciary performs actions without the appearance of legality,” he stated.
Morazán stated that this last phase, which is currently being developed, the judges are also issuing sentences where they take away the nationality of people without having powers by law and without due process.
“We were not called or summoned and they already have sentences where we are declared fugitives from justice when we have never been summoned and in addition to that we are ordered to confiscate the assets through procedures that do not even exist,” said the lawyer, one of the 94 denationalized on February 15.
Impunity
In the provisional concluding observations on the second periodic report of Nicaragua, the UN Committee against Torture expressed its concern about the lack of independence and impartiality of the Judiciary and the Public Ministry with respect to the Executive.
The observations indicate that the absence of separation of powers facilitated the use of criminal law to “criminalize dissent, the violation of procedural guarantees and contribute to impunity.”
In its observations, the Committee recommended that Nicaragua ensure the full independence, impartiality, and effectiveness of the Judiciary and the Attorney General’s Office, through a reform in line with international standards.
The IACHR in its 2022 annual report on Nicaragua explains that the “manipulation of the criminal justice system and the lack of independence of the Judiciary and the Public Ministry to silence opposition persons, including human rights defenders and journalists, is still manifest.”
