Law experts describe the proposal of the inter-institutional commission in the National Assembly as aberrational and illegal, which proposes increasing from 15 to 20 years in prison the sentences of Nicaraguans who they consider to have committed “treason against the fatherland” and in addition to confiscating your assets.
“What happens is that they are trying to legally embellish the confiscation, but to be honest, this act is called transfer of ownership, taking ownership of a person’s property,” explained human rights defender Pablo Cuevas.
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He added that the citizen who is stripped of his assets by the Nicaraguan justice will not be allowed legitimate defense. “The judges are going to collude with the government’s orders,” Cuevas explained in an interview with Article 66.
As for whether this law would be applied to current political prisoners, knowing that the law does not have retroactive effect, the expert indicated that “that is what the Constitution says (…) but the problem is that the country’s justice system has applied the retroactivity”, as in the case of many political prisoners to whom the recently approved laws were applied.
“They —the Ortega judges— do what suits them or what their top leaders order them to do, not what the constitution and the law establish. If the judges have an order to confiscate the assets of those who have already been sentenced they are going to do it,” Cuevas emphasized.
On the other hand, he pointed out that with or without law, the Ortega dictatorship has already seized the assets of many Nicaraguans. “That is an aberration, because the Attorney General’s Office cannot expropriate,” he reiterated.
Constitution prohibits confiscation
Article 44 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua establishes with regard to the right to property that “the right to private property of movable and immovable property and of the instruments and means of production is guaranteed.”
It states that by virtue of the social function of property, this right is subject, due to public utility or social interest, to the limitations and obligations imposed by law regarding its exercise.
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It points out that real estate can only be expropriated according to the law, if there is “previous payment in cash of fair compensation. In addition, it dictates that the confiscation of assets is prohibited and that “officials who violate this provision will respond with their assets at all times for the damages inflicted.”
For its part, the collective No Authority He explained on his Twitter account that “although confiscations are prohibited in Nicaragua, “Orteguism once again illegally appropriated properties whose tenants are critical of his regime.”
He recalled that the Ortega regime confiscated on April 24, the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) to turn it into the “museum of infamy.”
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“The property that is located in an exclusive area of Managua was rented by the agency and the regime declared it of public utility,” he said.
In 2018, the Ortega regime confiscated the facilities of the television outlet 100% Noticias, the offices of the communication outlet Confidencial, and that of several non-profit organizations. Currently the dictatorship has occupied the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa, it also has its president Juan Lorenzo Holmann and some of its directors imprisoned in “El Nuevo Chipote”.
