Mohamed Mohamed Farrara Lashtar, 64, a nephew of the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and a member of the close circle of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, sometimes interrupts their diplomatic routine in countries of the Middle East or Africaand comes out of the shadows to insult opponents in Nicaragua.
On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the Libyan official, nationalized in the service of Ortega, told in an article the anecdote of a governor of Damascus who refused to sell a “white donkey” to a German emperor in 1898 to avoid allegedly damaging the image of his people and concluded that “there are people who defend the reputation of their homeland, against those who want to destroy it, these are the patriots. And there are donkeys that sell the country for what it contains and whatever… This is the case of traitors!”
Although he did not make explicit reference to the exile of 222 political prisoners Lashtar repeated the official discourse against “traitors”, as the regime describes citizens who have been stripped of their nationality. But the ambassador not only kept silent about it, but also defended Ortega’s position that he was the victim of a “coup” in 2018.
Lashtar does not usually make public comments, except in a few appearances in the official media. On the occasions that she has done so, however, she exudes servility, like the time that, in another writing, he described Rosario Murillo as a “symbol of struggle, in the historic revolutionary transformation, in the lives of women.”
In contrast to these public flatteries to their bosses, most of their experiences are unknown. The former deputy before Parlacen for the FSLN has kept a low profile in the last three decades, despite Ortega’s alliance with Gaddafi, which allowed the caudillo to finance himself and Lasthar to climb to the top of the Nicaraguan regime.
From his work in the shadows, Lashtar returned to the international stage in two recent news: The Executive appointed him on March 3, 2023 as his ambassador in tunisia and also the American researcher Douglas Farah mentioned him on February 6, 2023 as a member of a network of launderers of illicit gold in the international marketwho works precisely for the Nicaraguan tyrant.
On November 15, 2021, Gaddafi’s nephew and Ortega operator was sanctioned by the United States. Thanks precisely to information from the US Treasury Departmentsome personal details can be known, such as that he has three passports: one Libyan (NG252351), another Nicaraguan (C1102007) and another diplomatic one also issued by Nicaragua (A00000271).
His house is located in Las Colinas residential, in Managua, and he has a Nicaraguan ID: 777-170559-0000M. This documentation identifies him as a Nicaraguan since he received nationality on April 11, 1990 at the end of the first period of the Sandinista government, according to resolution 1039 signed by the Director of Migration and Aliens at the time, Ana Isabel Morales.
Nine official appointments since 2007
Ortega came to power on January 10, 2007 and, from the outset, had Lashtar in mind when he made the first appointments to his cabinet.
In total, the ruler has appointed Lashtar to at least nine public positions in Nicaragua, since the first time. These appointments have been recorded in La Gaceta Official Gazette: private secretary to the president; private secretary for international affairs; special ambassador for foreign affairs; delegate for Africa, the Middle East and Arab countries; ambassador to Kuwait and concurrent to Egypt, Jordan, the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, and to Saudi Arabia.
Official records also indicate that Lashtar served between 2007 and 2011 as a substitute deputy, in the Central American Parliament, for Jacinto Suárez, now deceased and close in his political career to Ortega and Murillo. That legislative function was exercised during that period in parallel to his other public positions.
Two diplomatic sources consulted by CONFIDENTIAL They agreed that these appointments are the responsibility of the president, who generally receives the thanks when he makes it effective, while the foreign ministers get the “curses” when they are withdrawn.
They also expressed that the case of Lashtar is not usual and that, really, he does not function as a “diplomat”, but as “an operator of the underground interests of the presidential couple.”
“In general, the person is appointed as ambassador in one country and you have the concurrence in another. The Lashtar thing reflects the character of a dynastic regime that the current dictatorship has. He is seen as the envoy of the family. That is the logic with which he walks and the reason why he represents him so much, ”said one of the informants.
“Since it is of Arab, Libyan, Maghreb origin, it supposedly allows them to have more inputs (of resources), I rather believe that, instead of looking for money, they are looking for where to put and hide things,” he said.
The vision of this source partially coincides with that of the American researcher Farah, who denounced in an interview with This week and CONFIDENTIALthat the countries of the Middle East move around gold and it is an advantage to have an ambassador who speaks that language and can move in that region with diplomatic immunity, as is the case with Lashtar.
Lasthar was also mentioned in the case of the Panama Papers, an investigation of 80 media, led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism and in which CONFIDENTIAL was part. In 1998, the company Laurel Properties Inc. was registered in Panama, which granted it a general power to Lashtar.
This is how he met the Ortega Murillo
Despite the fact that the ambassador is known in the circle of the Ortegas and used to attend, by order of his in the nineties, to the radical left movements of Latin America, his links with the Libyan dictator Gaddafi were publicly known by the leak of the US diplomatic cables in 2011, known as Wikileaks, released in the case of Nicaragua by a journalistic alliance of CONFIDENTIAL with the newspaper La Nación of Costa Rica.
According to this version, it was Ambassador Paul Trivelli (2005-2008), who learned of the existence of Lashtar through information from internal sources in Nicaragua. During the eighties, before becoming naturalized, the Libyan worked in the commercial section of his country’s embassy and it was said that he was associated with “Libyan intelligence”.
Other sources confirmed that he was Libya’s ambassador to Nicaragua in 2005-2006. A source from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), consulted for this report, explained that Lashtar was directly related to Rafael Ortega Murillo, the eldest son of the presidential couple, when the Sandinista leader traveled to Libya to bring Gaddafi’s monetary contribution. , which occurred with a frequency of one to two times a year, in the stage after the electoral defeat.
In that political stage, which Ortega called “governing from below,” the Sandinista received a remittance from his Libyan friend. He even publicly acknowledged it in an interview with the journalist Fabián Medina.
The FSLN source reports that the Sandinista caudillo used to spend six weeks on each trip he made to that country, employing Rafael Ortega Murillo as aide-de-camp on them or any of the children who traveled with him. This made it possible to develop a personal relationship with the Libyan dictator.
In Nicaragua, Lashtar was seen as a source of “independent financing” from his uncle in the FSLN. Someone with their own life, own business.
“That relationship was personal. Gaddafi gave him the money by check and Ortega spent depositing it in his accounts in Panama. That money helped the general secretary (of the FSLN) make his own assets, with which he took advantage of other factions of the same political organization in the 1990s. I refer to Bayardo Arce, who managed the capital of the party. That was how decisive the support that the dictator received then was,” explains the same source.
The source does not know what business Lashtar was engaged in, but does confirm that he delegated the attention of radical left-wing groups. “Tell Mohamed to take care of the Peruvians,” ordered Ortega, referring to the members of Sendero Luminoso.
Ortega had an important link with Gaddafi. In the years 2000 and 2003, the FARC sought the Nicaraguan leader to obtain the approval of a million-dollar financing from Libya, according to two letters found in 2008 in the computer of the former Colombian guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes and published in June of that year by the newspaper La Prensa.
Reyes was killed in a Colombian bombing attack on his camp in Ecuador. “As you will understand if we were experiencing other conditions in Colombia, we would have privileged a personal interview with you to discuss not only this topic. On the occasion of our meeting with the Libyans in that country, they themselves explained to us the political responsibilities in charge of compañero Daniel Ortega, with the execution of the policies of the Libyan Government in our region,” Reyes wrote to him on February 22, 2003.
Lashtar was a founding partner at channel 13
According to documentation from the Managua Mercantile Registry, revealed in journalistic investigations, Lashtar was a founding partner of Celeste, SA, the commercial name of channel 13, directed by the children of the presidential couple: Maurice, Camila and Luciana Ortega Murillo.
Journalistic investigations in April 2011 also revealed that, while the children held the most public positions on the television station, the founding partners were Lashtar, María Luisa Mejía Martínez and Sandra Guevara.
Mejía Martínez is recognized as a lawyer for Rosario Murillo and Guevara has worked directly for Ortega for decades.
It is not the first time that the suitability of the diplomats who hold positions for Nicaragua during the Ortega administration has been questioned independently. In 2009, it became known that former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a fugitive in his country, was traveling with Nicaraguan diplomatic passport.
Ortega has protected other fugitives from justice from their respective nations, such as the former Salvadoran presidents, Salvador Sánchez Cerén and Mauricio Funes, who were also naturalized together with their closest relatives.
Lashtar’s business facet is also partially known in the country. She is associated with the Nicarabe Libyan Agricultural Company for Development (ANILIB) where she held the position of President of the Council, according to information published in June 2016 in the newspaper La Gaceta.
That seems to be a key undertaking for the Libyans on Nicaraguan soil. The Sandinista caudillo donated two farms to ANILIB, “San Ramón” and “Santa Gertrudis”, according to Decree 117-2008. According to a journalistic investigation, the State paid 1.45 million dollars at the end of the 1990s for Finca San Ramón, located in San Francisco Libre. Neither Ortega nor the Libyan embassy have commented on the issue since then.
When they have closed ranks it is on issues of mutual interest. It happened with the death of relatives of Gaddafi in May 2011. Ortega denounced the “massacre” in Caracas and two months later the ambassador told the official media that only the Nicaraguan ruler and the ALBA countries gave a “message for peace.” about the situation in your country.
