Mgr Rolando Alvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, remains imprisoned in cell 19 of module 3-1 of the maximum security space, of the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, in Managua; This was revealed by a criminal source to the digital media divergent.
The prison source explained to the media that the religious leader is in “El Infiernillo”, one of the six modules that are in the maximum security space called 300, because there they reach approximately 300 inmates, in some 156 cells. The monsignor’s cell is the same as that of the other inmates: three meters long by three meters wide, with two cots each and a hole for the inmates to relieve themselves.
«The particularity with El Infiernillo is the position of the cells, located from north to south, receiving the sun all day and without space for air to flow. It feels suffocating heat of more than 40 degrees Celsiusaccording to the inmates who have been in the place”, details the Divergent note.
total isolation
According to the source, the bishop of Matagalpa is watched by guards 24 hours a day and his cell is searched daily to “avoid any communication with the other inmates of La Modelo.”
«Monsignor (Alvarez) receive preferential treatment compared to the other inmates of the 300, “said the source. The religious receive medical attention at least twice a day, they allow him parcels (his family can bring him packages) and they give him sun exposure. “They take photos of him almost daily to have evidence that he is supposedly in good health,” he added.
The religious leader has been held in the “La Modelo” prison in Tipitapa since February 9, the date on which he refused to be exiled, along with 222 other former political prisoners, to the United States.
The only visit that the bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa has received was on Saturday, March 25, when the Ortega Murillo dictatorship allowed the visit of his two brothers and exhibited him in photographs and videos through its propaganda media.
Related news: They demand that the Ortega dictatorship put an end to the kidnapping of Monsignor Álvarez
This Wednesday marks 53 days since the last time the regime publicly displayed Monsignor Álvarez, who has accumulated 272 days as a prisoner of conscience.
for the lawyer Juan Diego Barberenathe silence of the dictatorship on the situation of the bishop is intended to “maintain the terror and uncertainty of his family and of the entire society that is expectant about Monsignor Álvarez, uncertainty that also translates into fear that the dictatorship has imposed.”
“It is also a reflection of the religious persecution that exists in the country and above all, the violation of the right to freely profess faith,” Barberena assured Article 66.
Alexa Zamoraa member of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), also pointed out that “this arbitrary act of imprisoning and keeping the monsignor in isolation brings with it a high political cost for the regime, which, although it is true, has always emphasized that he is not interested in the position of the international community, is a fact that can trigger not only new positions and changes among the few allies that the regime still has left and governments that are still silent as well as their own followers.
The opposition leader also remarked that the isolation in which the Ortega dictatorship keeps Bishop Álvarez “should be a big red alert for the international community in terms of mobilizing the political will to safeguard the life and integrity of the monsignor».
For his part, the political analyst Elisha Nunez He stressed that the issue of Bishop Álvarez, for the dictator Daniel Ortega “is a matter of personal viciousness.”
The presidential couple “look at Monsignor Álvarez not only as someone who denounces them, strips them naked, basically puts them in trouble with his preaching, but they also look at him as a competition because at the end of the day they are trying to implant a kind of new religion in Nicaragua, where they are the intermediaries with God and the language of Rosario and that they occupy is aimed at that,” said the opponent of Article 66.
«It is something that borders on madness, but not a madness that exempts the person who commits it from responsibility, but a vicious madness, a madness that hurts and Monsignor Rolando Álvarez is being a victim of this», he added.
