The Nicaraguan justice system sent to trial this Monday the Bishop Rolando Alvareza senior leader of the Catholic Church, critical of President Daniel Ortega, who is accused of conspiring to undermine national integrity and spreading false news to the detriment of the State.
Judge Gloria María Saavedra Corrales, who held the initial hearing against the religious, upheld the precautionary measure of house arrest against the bishop, according to a statement of the Judiciary.
Lawyer Yader Morazán, a former official of the Nicaraguan Judiciary, denounced on Twitter that the hearing was held “behind closed doors” and with a public defender “imposed by the Ortega regime”, and considered that “the request for the appointment of a trusted lawyer of the priest’s family”.
Monsignor Álvarez, a bishop who is part of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference and who in his homilies criticized the human rights violations that occur in the country, was accused by the Prosecutor’s Office on December 13 of various crimes after staying for more than three months held at home in Managua without there being a legal case against him. The lawyers then assured that the religious was “in a legal limbo”.
Álvarez, 56, is a religious who administered the Diocese of Matagalpa, located in central Nicaragua.
He directed the communication area of the Catholic Church and various stations which were closed by the Ortega government in 2022.
The tensions between the government of President Daniel Ortega and the country’s Catholic Church began in 2018 when protests arose against the president, which he branded as an attempted coup d’état.
Ortega accused the priests of “coup plotters” and in the case of Monsignor Álvarez he was accused by the Police in August 2022 of “organizing violent groups” in the Diocese he led in the city of Matagalpa, a town located in central Nicaragua. .
The prelate said that the accusations against him were false and stressed that he had not committed any crime in a homily that was broadcast on Facebook Live.
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