The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo criminally accused the sociologist, political analyst and writer, Óscar René Vargas Escobar, arrested on November 22, for the alleged commission of three crimes of conspiracyincluding one that for the first time appears in the cases of political prisoners.
The crimes charged to Vargas in the Tenth Criminal Court of Managua, in charge of Judge Gloria Saavedra, are: conspiracy to undermine national integrity, propagation of false news and provocation to commit rebellion, the latter for the first time associated with a prisoner of conscience.
According to the electronic registry of the Judiciary, the accusation was filed by the prosecutor Yubelca del Carmen Pérez Alvarado, on November 23, one day after Vargas’ arrest. In said accusation, the State of Nicaragua presents itself as “victim or offended.”
The initial hearing in the case was scheduled for next Friday, December 9 at 9:00 in the morning.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) denounced that the accusation against the 76-year-old sociologist is nothing more than the “continuation of the judicial farces” carried out by the regime against a thousand political prisoners.
Legal farces continue. With the macho procedure, the ORMU regime accused Dr. Óscar René Vargas, ás: conspiracy to undermine national integrity, provocation to commit rebellion and propagation of false news pic.twitter.com/RYXWuSFx3J
— Cenidh (@cenidh) December 1, 2022
“Cenidh demands immediate freedom for Dr. Vargas and the cessation of repression through the unpresentable Judiciary,” the organization said on its social networks.
Critic of the Ortega y Murillo regime
Vargas, 76, was arrested on Tuesday, November 22 at about 10:45 am at the home of his sister Patricia, located in Bolonia.
The sociologist “came out from where he was hiding to visit her due to her state of health and, ten minutes after arriving, the Police appeared. The walls were thrown down, they entered with weapons to take him away. At the time of the arrival of the Police, he came out serene, ”his relatives explained to CONFDENTIAL.
Vargas is a well-known critic of the Ortega dictatorship, who served during the Sandinista revolution as an adviser to the National Directorate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
The sociologist had been appointed Nicaragua’s ambassador to France in 2007, when Ortega returned to power, however his appointment was annulled after questioning the dismissals of three state ministers and saying in an interview that “thinking brings a lot of adversity.”
In his last article —published last Sunday, November 20— he raised a strategy for the release of all political prisonersa total of 219 throughout the country, whose relatives have denounced the poor conditions to which they are subjected by the dictatorship, which has caused an increase in their physical and mental deterioration.
In his writing, questioned a report from a technical mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who visited Nicaragua at the beginning of the month, and in which the agency assessed that the Nicaraguan economic outlook is favourable.
235 political prisoners until November
According to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, Vargas, who is one of the last political prisoners captured by the Ortega Murillo regime, is being held at the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as El Chipote, in Managua.
The Mechanism also indicated that between October 1 and November 30, 16 political prisoners (11 men and 5 women) were captured, so the total number of prisoners of conscience went from 219, registered up to September, to 235 in November. past.
