The business leaders and political prisoners Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas, president and former vice president of the Higher Council for Private Enterprise (Cosep), respectively, celebrate this Friday, November 25, 400 days since they were taken hostage of conscience by the Ortega dictatorship. Murillo.
The Ortega justice sentenced Michael Healy to 13 years in prison for the alleged crimes of “undermining national integrity” and Álvaro Vargas to nine years in prison for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.”
Judge Ángel Jeancarlos Fernández González, of the Fourth Criminal District Court of Managua, was the one who issued the sentences against the two opponents.
The United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Judge Fernández for “undermining democratic processes or institutions when he convicted and sentenced pro-democratic leaders on trumped-up charges.
Related news:Deteriorated! This is what Michael Healy looks like as a product of his imprisonment
This same judge also sentenced the businessman Luis Rivas Anduray; the opponents Dora María Téllez, José Antonio Peraza and Víctor Hugo Tinoco.
After a year in prison, Healy was presented to the dictatorship’s propaganda media on September 30 of this year. In the released images, he looks underweight and looks almost unrecognizable with his face down. A day after Álvaro Vargas was presented, the political prisoner showed noticeable weight loss.
Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas were arrested on October 21, 2021. Healy was summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office for an “interview” in the case of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Funides). That same day he was arrested minutes after giving a statement to the Ortega authorities. While Vargas was captured in his home.
The businessmen are kept in prison in the cells of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), known as “El Nuevo Chipote”, a center where they receive cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, according to complaints from the human rights organization and relatives of the hostages of conscience. .
