The Nicaraguan Prosecutor’s Office accused the priest Benito Enrique Martínez for the alleged crime of conspiracy to undermine national integrity in a contest of false news to the detriment of the Nicaraguan State, the Judicial Branch reported on Wednesday.
Martínez, 64, who was imprisoned last Thursday, is the ninth Nicaraguan priest detained in the last six months, including Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, and the eighth to be charged by the prosecution.
The accusation was presented by the prosecutor of the Heydi Estela Ramírez Olivas case before Judge Karen Vanessa Chavarría Morales, head of the Ninth Criminal District Court of Managua District Hearing.
The accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office identifies the State of Nicaragua as a victim or offended by the priest, according to the record of the preliminary hearing published online by the Judiciary.
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The priest’s family presented on Tuesday before the Court of Appeals, Penal Chamber One, Managua Circumscription, an appeal for illegal detention against General Commissioner Luis Alberto Pérez Olivas, head of the National Police Judicial Assistance Directorate, who is in custody. Procedure.
POLICE ARRESTED 9 PRIESTS THIS YEAR
Martínez’s arrest was announced and denounced last Friday by exiled Nicaraguan priest Uriel Vallejos.
In his complaint, Vallejos attached a video in which the detained and now accused priest appears haranguing a group of students outside the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) after finishing the so-called “Mother of All Marches” against the Government, on May 30, 2018, which was attacked by police and armed civilians, leaving eight dead.
In the video, Martínez asks the students who demonstrated against the Executive of President Daniel Ortega not to “coward” and shouts “Long live Nicaragua”, “Long live the mothers of the fallen of 19 (April 2018)”, ” Long live the doctors, the decent journalists”.
He also shouted “out with the murderous couple”, “out with the miserable murderers”, alluding to the Nicaraguan presidential couple, and then repeated “out” seven times.
With this new arrest, there are 9 religious arrested in the last six months, including Bishop Álvarez, who, however, has not been officially charged.
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Three weeks ago, President Ortega attacked the Catholic Church led by Pope Francis, accusing it of not practicing democracy, of being a “dictatorship” and a “perfect tyranny” and of having used “its bishops in Nicaragua to give a coup d’état” against his government in the framework of the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018 over controversial social security reforms.
The arrest of Bishop Álvarez and the other eight priests, including Martínez, is the most recent chapter in a particularly convulsive last year for the Catholic Church of Nicaragua with the Government of Ortega, who has branded as “coup plotters” and “terrorists” the hierarchs.
Relations between the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 years.
