The Nicaraguan Judiciary has been “instrumentalized” by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo “as an organ of repression and criminalization of opponents, activists, journalists and human rights defenders,” states the sixth report of the Nicaraguan Observatory against torture.
The document titled “Analysis of judicial processes. December 2021 – March 2022” indicates that the judicial authoritiescontrary to their mandate, “have aggravated the suffering and have risked the life, integrity and health of political prisoners, leaving them helpless and not asserting their most basic rights.”
“The lack of judicial protection has been erected as a necessary mechanism for the realization of torture and ill-treatment (…) all of this to fulfill a political function of punishing political prisoners,” they point out.
The Observatory, which is part of the Nicaraguan Never Again Human Rights Collective, points out that it was able to confirm the arrest and conviction of 66 people who suffered delays in justice and “stigmatization and hostility after the presidential speech in which they were called “sons of bitch”.
This was evidenced, according to the report, in the communiqués issued by the Public Ministry that reflected the disqualifications and accusations made by the Government to justify the 2018 repression″ which included “a frontal attack on the reputation, dignity and presumption of innocence of political prisoners”.
The communiqués are valued by this organization as “a prejudgment and early conviction” in 100% of the processes “where we observe that all concluded with a guilty verdict, regardless of whether the evidence was insufficient.”
multiple violations
The trials against these political prisoners “solidify the totalitarianism and submission” of the Judiciary “to the presidential couple” and therefore “the judges have been selected for their obedience to the ruling party,” the report highlights.
The analysis of the judicial processes and actions reveal that they were framed in “validation of an illegal and mostly violent detention, permissibility and impunity regarding the practice of different types of torture and/or mistreatment, imposition of penalties based on an unconstitutional law to respond to a policy of repression, submission to prison despite the deterioration of their health and ineffectiveness of all internal mechanisms for the protection of their rights.”
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“The denial of justice, the ineffectiveness of judicial resources and the impunity in the acts of torture perpetrated have been intentional judicial acts, guided from a punishment perspective for participation in acts of protest against the Government,” they mention.
The Observatory also refers to violations of due process against political prisoners, among which it highlighted ignorance of the accusation, null publicity of the judicial processes, limited right to defense, deprivation of the use of the word, in addition that they were forced to blame after threats and torture.
“The way in which these judicial processes have been configured constitute tools to generate cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as to allow torture,” the report adds.
