The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo prevented lawyer Francisco Omar Gutiérrez from entering the country, who since July 25 has been waiting to be admitted as the private defender of Monsignor Leonardo Urbina, parish priest of the Church of Perpetual Help, in Boaco.
The litigant left Nicaragua on September 9, as he explains, to visit relatives in Miami, United States; but when he wanted to return to his country on Thursday, September 15, the airline Avianca informed him that the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration did not authorize his entry to Nicaragua and that they would not allow him to board.
In less than a week, the litigant is the third Nicaraguan to whom the dictatorship denied entry to his country. The regime also prevented the entry of Father Juan de Dios García, vicar of the Santo Cristo de Las Colinas parish; and the sociologist, activist and feminist Maria Teresa Blandon.
Related news: Ortega prevents feminist activist María Teresa Blandón from returning to Nicaragua
“I do not know what the legal arguments are, for which they leave me in limbo outside my homeland,” Gutiérrez told Office 505.
Francisco Omar Gutiérrez, 62, is Nicaraguan, originally from Boaco, and has 29 years of experience as a lawyer. “They end 30 years of exercising my profession, I have never been reprimanded in the exercise of my profession because I have acted professionally, ethically,” he lamented.
The defender was appointed by the family of Monsignor Leonardo Urbina Rodríguez as his lawyer and although José Ángel Urbina, father of the priest, has filed seven writs to appoint the private defender, Judge Edén Aguilar has not admitted the requests, which has caused be a process full of irregularities.
Despite requests from the priest’s family, in the trial for alleged sexual abuse and rape, Monsignor Urbina was represented by public defender Jennifer Elliett Hernández Granera.
The parish priest of the Perpetuo Socorro church in Boaco was sentenced to 49 years in prison, of which he will serve 30 (by constitutional mandate) in the Modelo prison in Managua.
In addition, Monsignor Leonardo Urbina’s father also filed an appeal against the sentence, but the Managua Court of Appeals (TAM) has not yet ruled. The public defender did the same, despite the fact that the family insists that her private attorney be appointed.
«As allowed by Art. 102 CPP (Criminal Procedure Code) when it comes to prisoners such as my son, whom we have not seen or had any contact in seven weeks, I ask for the seventh time to have as private defender of our election in replacement of the public defender who appeared offering her services and you chose her,” reads the document addressed to Judge Edén Aguilar, head of the Third Specialized Court for Violence in Managua.
Likewise, it indicates that “my son was processed and a trial was held, he was declared guilty and sentenced with a refusal to have the lawyer of choice as defense counsel and a public defender was imposed, whom we have never seen or talked to or we do not know or trust, a situation that continues to this day.
