The journalist and presidential candidate of the Democratic Restoration Party (PRD), Miguel Mora, and the former deputy of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), María Fernanda Flores, were the last prisoners of conscience sentenced in the first week of political trials “in a single hearing”, held at the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as “the new Chipote”.
Yader Parajón, Yaser Vado, Ana Margarita Vijil, Dora María Téllez and Lesther Alemán, were the other five political prisoners sentenced this week for allegedly violating Law 1055 or Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination for Peace, also known as the “Sovereignty Law”.
Mora was found guilty of the crime of “undermining national integrity” by Ortega judge Natalia Camila Tardencilla, who changed the criminal case to “conspiracy” at the last moment of the hearing. The Prosecutor’s Office requested for the journalist the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and disqualification from holding public office.
María Fernanda Flores, former first lady and wife of former President Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002), was found guilty of the crime of “conspiracy” and the Prosecutor’s Office requested eight years in prison plus disqualification from holding public office. On February 9, the sentence for both political prisoners will be read.
Tweets and interviews between the evidence against Mora
CONFIDENTIAL confirmed that the evidence presented in the process against Mora included: an interview he offered in 2018 to “The Grayzone” and four tweets. In three, he shares journalistic notes from 100% Noticias, a media outlet he owns, referring to sanctions from the United States and the United Kingdom, and another where he thanked the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, for speaking out before the aggression suffered –in October 2020– by his wife Verónica Chávez.
“On behalf of my wife, Mr. Almagro, I thank you for your words. Nicaragua awaits the declaration of illegitimacy of this criminal Sandinista dictatorship, do not fail us”, indicates the tweet presented as evidence by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Said evidence, according to Judge Tardencilla, “was sufficient” to prove the damage committed by Mora.
The lawyers of the prisoner of conscience, during the hearing, were treated “aggressively” by the court, which also demanded that they not “exceed their limits” when they tried to make their client’s right to defense prevail.
The defense confirmed CONFIDENTIAL-– also could not approach his client before or during the trial.
Unlike other political prisoners, Mora managed to express himself “broadly” during the trial, reiterating that he is “innocent” and that those who judged him were committing “prevarication.”
“I have not conspired against anyone, I am innocent,” he said.
Police prohibited speaking and looking at Mora
During the hearings this Friday, the Ortega justice also allowed the entry of a relative. In Mora’s case, his wife Verónica Chávez was the one who attended and had lunch next to her, although during the trial the policemen of “the new Chipote” prohibited her from even “turning to see him.”
In an interview with 100% Noticias, Chávez rejected the trial to which her husband, Mora Barberena, was subjected, calling it “null” and reiterating that “he has not committed any crime.”
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights described the trial against Mora as “a judicial farce full of vices and irregularities,” denouncing that the process “persisted the same format of repression, incommunicado defense attorneys, and an exaggerated presence of riot police.”
twice arrested
Mora Barberena, also owner of 100% Noticias, was arrested for the second time on June 20, 2021, three months after making public his candidacy for the Presidency for the PRD, a party to which the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) of the Front Sandinista, in May 2021, ordered the cancellation of its legal status, in order to eliminate the electoral box of the National Coalition.
The communicator has been persecuted since April 2018, after he ordered the programming of Canal 100% Noticias —closed by the regime in December 2018— to cover, almost 24 hours a day, the social protests calling for the resignation of the leaders of the Sandinista Front.
The first time that Mora was arrested, on December 21, 2018, it occurred when the Police of the Ortega-Murillo regime raided the facilities of Canal 100% Noticias. On that occasion, the press officer of that media outlet, Lucía Pineda Ubau, was also imprisoned. Both were released in June 2019, after six months of imprisonment, mistreatment and torture.
Arnoldo Alemán accompanied María Fernanda Flores
In the trial, María Fernanda Flores was also allowed the company of former President Alemán. The former liberal deputy was detained since the night of June 21, 2021, in the midst of a hunt unleashed by the Ortega regime against the Nicaraguan opposition, to pave her way to presidential re-election in a process described as an “electoral farce.” Like two presidential candidates, Cristiana Chamorro, Noel Vidaurre and the political commentator, Jaime Arellano, Flores has remained in her home under police custody, and isolation, for which this Friday she had to be guarded until “the new Chipote”, where the marathon trial was carried out.
flowers was disgraced from her position as deputy on November 26, 2020 and with it, he lost his parliamentary immunity. Deputy María Haydée Osuna, president of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), promoted the motion against Flores. She also supported the Sandinista Front to strip the Citizens for Freedom (CxL) party of its legal status when there were three months to go before the general voting.
“That they have removed my immunity and my constitutional rights, through a vote that was held in an election, arbitrarily is one more demonstration of the type of government and dictatorship that we live in Nicaragua,” Flores denounced upon leaving the Plenary in 2020, where he always tried to position himself as an opposition force to the regime; However, her image was always under the shadow of the acts of corruption committed by her husband, former President Alemán.
Trials in “the new Chipote” violate the law
The political trials reactivated by orders of Daniel Ortega have been scheduled for the entire month of February against political prisoners, in the same facilities of “the new Chipote”, where dozens have been imprisoned since the end of May 2021.
However, carrying out these processes in the prison facilities constitutes one more of the illegalities of due process, according to the specialist in Criminal Law, María Asunción Moreno, in an interview with Tonight.
Lawyers who closely follow the cases against political prisoners agree with Moreno that judges cannot hold hearings outside the Judicial Complex, and that the exceptions established in article 121 of the Code of Criminal Procedure only apply to “proceedings” that require the presence of the judge in his territorial jurisdiction.
However, they maintain that the exception does not apply in the case of these political trials, because neither the defense nor the Prosecutor’s Office have requested that they be held in “the new Chipote,” the lawyer said.
The right to defense is violated
Another of the illegalities is that the defenders of the political prisoners have not accessed their files –completely or partially– and they have not been able to talk freely with the prisoners of conscience.
A lawyer who monitors political trials assured CONFIDENTIAL that in these processes the exercise of technical and material defense is being violated, contrary to article 124 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPP), which establishes that “the parties may obtain at their own expense simple copies of the judicial proceedings without any formality” .
Also, he added, article 34 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua is violated, which in its item 4, demands that “their intervention and due defense be guaranteed from the beginning of the process or procedure and to have adequate time and means for their defense.” .
In addition, this January 31, the Public Ministry violated the presumption of innocence of political prisoners, by calling them “criminals and delinquents” in a statement announcing the resumption of the trials.
“These same criminals and delinquents have reoffended, attacking the rights of the Nicaraguan people and society, compromising peace and security. They are the same ones that promoted and directed the terrorist acts of the failed coup attempt of 2018, having paralyzed the country and created damage to the economy; They are the same ones that have caused so much pain and mourning in the Nicaraguan family because of the murders, torture and kidnappings,” he published.
Likewise, Ortega already condemned the political prisoners on November 8, in his most virulent speech against political prisoners, in which he called them “sons of bitches of imperialism”.
They demand the release of political prisoners
The Ortega regime keeps more than 170 Nicaraguans imprisoned, and more than thirty of them remain in “the new Chipote”, under isolation, in punishment cells, suffering physical and psychological torture, according to their relatives, who have only managed to visit them on five occasions during the more than six months of confinement.
Relatives of more than 30 political prisoners They demanded, at the end of January, the annulment of the trials and the unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience. In this way, they joined a previous statement, in which another group of relatives appealed for the support of “rulers, living forces of the nation and (Catholic) Church” so that they “lead” a “citizen unification process”, emphasizing that the release of prisoners of conscience would serve “as a kind of liberation shared by all Nicaraguans.”
After the communiqués, the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), which had been silent since September 2021, supported the demand for the freedom of prisoners of conscience, and announced its willingness in favor of a national dialogue “without preconditions”, in in the midst of the worst legitimacy crisis of the Ortega regime, which previously announced meetings with different economic sectors, without mentioning COSEP.
Among the 39 political prisoners captured between May 28 and October 21 (including four under house arrest), 29 are accused of alleged conspiracy to undermine; another seven are accused of money laundering and other crimes; two are investigated for violations of the “Law of Sovereignty” and one for abusive management and improper appropriation and retention.
The regime has used against the opposition the package of repressive laws that they approved between October 2020 and February 2021, being the most used until now, Law 1055 or Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination for Peace, better known as the “Sovereignty Law”, which facilitated the imprisonment of seven presidential candidates, as well as political, civic, student, peasant, former diplomat, journalist, activist, professional and human rights defender leaders.
He has also used the Law Cybercrime Special, known as the “Gag Law”, approved on October 27, 2020, which penalizes whoever -according to the regime’s criteria- spreads “false news”.
Thus, the Prosecutor’s Office sentenced in January Donald Margarito Alvarenga Y Douglas Cerros Lanzas. Alvarenga was convicted of allegedly inciting “hate and violence” through Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages and for “subversion, disobedience and rebellion at the level of conspiracy to affect national integrity”; and Cerros for allegedly undermining national integrity and spreading false news.
(With information from EFE)
