The Blue and White National Unity (Unab) continues to demand the release of Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, a hostage of conscience of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Unab has demanded that the regime release the bishop, who has not committed any crime and who is in prison for raising his voice against the violations of the human rights of Nicaraguans in the context of the sociopolitical crisis.
«Bishop Rolando Álvarez has been illegally arrested, criminalized and sentenced in retaliation for being a critical voice against the abuses committed against the people of Nicaragua by the Ortega-Murillo regime. We demand his freedom, he is innocent!”, The opposition organization wrote on its Facebook page.
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The bishop accumulates more than six months since he was taken by force and kidnapped from the Episcopal Palace of the Diocese of Matagalpa, from where he was violently taken at dawn on August 19, 2022. For 15 days he was already besieged with no possibility of leaving to his pastoral work.
The only reference to the place where the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, could be held captive, is that he was locked up in the National Penitentiary System (SPN), known as “La Modelo”. The cardinal would be captive there since February 9.
At the beginning of February the regime tried to banish him from Nicaragua by sending him on a plane to the United States, but the prelate ruined the plan of the dictatorial couple and refused to board the flight.
His family has not seen him
To this day, his family has not been able to see him, according to local media and human rights organizations that document the case of the first bishop imprisoned and convicted by the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
His sister has asked the regime’s justice to allow her to see her relative, but everything has been useless. She does not know where and how she is. The prelate is part of the group of more than 30 political prisoners that the dictatorship maintains in its jails, most of them are confined in “La Modelo” in Tipitapa.
After resisting being banished, the bishop was taken to the Courts of Managua where he was subjected to an express summary trial. That same day, February 10, he was found guilty, sentenced to 26 years in prison, stripped of his nationality, and stripped of his civil and political rights for life.
