The members of the political council of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB) and current prisoners of conscience of the Ortega regime, Róger Reyes and José Alejandro Quintanilla Hernández, known as Alex Hernández, were found guilty of the alleged crime of “conspiring to undermine national integrity”, in a political trial carried out in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), El Chipote.
The Prosecutor’s Office requests ten years in prison and disqualification from public office for both, accused in the same process by the judge, Félix Salmerón Moreno, of the Fifth Criminal District of Judgment. Lawyer Henry López, defender of Hernández, explained that the Prosecutor’s Office was unable to prove the commission of the crime by the accused. “This defense considers that in that trial the atypicality of the act was demonstrated,” he said.
Among the key evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office is a report by the computer expert, which shows videos published on social networks, where the accused allegedly called for international sanctions. However, that was not proven.
The videos that both Reyes and Hernández had recorded anticipating their imminent arrest, after the political hunt unleashed by Daniel Ortega against opposition leaders since May 2021, were used by the Public Ministry against the detainees.
“They do not demonstrate any type of conspiracy because Alex was arrested on August 23 and that video was published on the 25th. There is a quite distorted chronological order of the events, so the criminal type of conspiracy to undermine national security is not demonstrated. ”, expressed the defense.
The other videos are related to the electoral process in which the defendants denounced the irregularities, but did not ask for sanctions against Nicaragua.
“What they are doing is an exercise of their civil and political rights to participate in the electoral processes and to denounce (…) but they are not calling for military intervention, nothing like that,” the defender clarified. In the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office also presented as witnesses eight police officers, including an undercover agent -known as code one-.
Despite the fact that the defense questioned the evidence of the Public Ministry, “it is clear that the court has already prepared a prefabricated sentence of guilt. The families of the accused were clear about that, but what mattered to us to demonstrate was the judicial farce that is being carried out and truly, we see it as a political triumph, politically we won the case, “said López.
Hernández recalled in his speech at the trial his previous arrest in 2018, and pointed out that just like on that occasion, this time they could not prove anything either. “Today I am graduating as a politician because the government has taken away my freedom, my career, and even my family. However, I don’t feel hate for any of them. On the contrary, every day I pray for them. Today I return to my cell again, but with the same dignity with which they captured me, ”he said, according to a relative.
They edit video of Reyes
In the case of Reyes, the Prosecutor’s Office edited the video in which the accused identified himself as a defender of the presidential candidate, Félix Maradiaga, and pointed out the persecution against him, not only because of his opposition, but also because of his work as a lawyer.
Reyes was arrested on the night of August 20, 2021, in Carazo. At the beginning of January of this year, his family and the UNAB launched an SOS because the defendant was going through a “very serious” situation locked up in a punishment cell, with memory problems, and depression. His wife, Fernanda Guevara, must have described her first daughter so that Reyes would remember her face and told him about her second daughter, whom she had not mentioned at all.
He recognized that he needed psychological help and requested specialized attention from the authorities, who seemed to pay him no attention, until he went on a three-day hunger strike, as a measure of pressure in his case. They assured him that they would solve his case, but until mid-January, when the regime allowed the fifth visit to prisoners of conscience, in almost eight months of confinement, it had not happened.
While, Hernández was captured on August 23, 2021. His relatives came to El Chipote to ask about him, but they did not get answers until the third day of consultations, they received bottles of water and thus confirmed his whereabouts.
This is the second time that Hernández has been imprisoned by the Ortega regime. In 2018 he was one of the more than one hundred prisoners of conscience imprisoned in the country’s prisons for getting involved in civic protests, but he managed to get out through the questionable Amnesty law, approved by the Ortega regime.
