The testimony of two police officers and publications on social networks are the “evidence” that the Ortega regime will present against the political prisoner Oscar René Vargaskidnapped on the morning of Tuesday, November 22 and confined to a punishment cell in El Chipote.
The Prosecutor’s Office accused the 76-year-old sociologist one day after his arbitrary detention in Managua, which occurred when he was visiting his sister Patricia, who is in delicate health.
Although the charges were not initially made public, the authorities finally charged the intellectual for the alleged crimes of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” and “propagation of false news through information and communication technologies.”
These are the same crimes that the dictatorship has charged against other prisoners of conscience in a series of accusations who have been described as “machoteras” by human rights organizations, who have denounced that the prosecutors of the dictatorship only change the names of the accused to formalize the judicial persecutions.
According to the brief for the exchange of information and evidence, presented on December 9 by the prosecutor Yubelca del Carmen Pérez Alvarado, to which she had access CONFIDENTIALthe sociologist was also accused of “provocation to commit rebellion”, as the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) had reported days before.
The president of Cenidh, Vilma Núñez, warned then that it could be a State strategy to criminalize him and impose a greater sentence. “Careful, they are going to give him 30 years. Or I don’t know how many years. That is the intention”, explained the human rights defender.
The judge in charge of the case is in charge of the tenth Criminal Court of Managua, Gloria Saavedra Corrales, who has a history of judicial persecution against opponents of Ortega.
Before the regime turned Vargas into one of the 235 prisoners of conscience that exists in Nicaragua, the sociologist frequently expressed his opinion on the reality of the country both in the independent media and in his Bloga site where at different times he analyzed the economic, social and political situation, alternating his demand for democracy with the denunciation of human rights abuses committed by Ortega.
During the 1980s, Vargas was an adviser to the National Directorate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, one of whose members was Ortega, whom he met in 1967 when he rescued from an operation carried out by the National Guard against Sandinista guerrillas in the Monseñor Lezcano neighborhood of Managua.
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Prosecutor Pérez Alvarado is one of the members of the judicial machinery that has repressed political prisoners. She was penalized last July by the United States. His “evidence” brief also indicates that Vargas made the comments on Facebook between June 12 and 18, 2021, and gave an interview on June 27 of that year to the NTN24 television station.
The first lie: “Captured on public roads”
The Prosecutor “accredits” the testimony of the officer of the search and capture area, Salvador de Jesús Chacón, chip number 14606, who assured that he captured the political analyst in “open public street” to comply with an order that already “existed in the name of of the defendant,” according to the document.
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The prosecutor revealed that the person who issued the order was General Commissioner Luis Alberto Pérez Olivas, head of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), sanctioned by the international community for human rights abuseson November 22, thereby contradicting herself.
“He went to the place, confirming that the defendant was there. The witness (Chacón) requested support from the public security officers of the Ajax Delgado Complex and in the company of five officers managed to arrest the accused on public roads, being transferred to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance,” said prosecutor Pérez Alvarado.
The version contrasts with what was expressed by the relatives of Vargas, who denounced a violent action by the Police. His ex-wife, the poet Daisy Zamora, said, later to catchthat the order had been executed by “a hooded regiment of the Ortega guard, with home invasion.”
In the case of the DAJ, inspector María Palma Téllez will also be summoned to appear in court and, if she is not found, her boss, Commissioner Francisco Villareal Morales, “head of the anti-narcotics department,” can appear.
“Computer experts” to review networks
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Vargas was arrested with $2,161 in bills of different denominations, his credit cards, personal documents, and an information storage device with his name were confiscated. To evaluate its content, the Police used inspector Francisco Antonio Gutiérrez Valverde.
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Gutiérrez Valverde is located in the Department of Computer Crimes of the DAJ and his testimony will be incorporated as a “computer expert”. But, “if he cannot appear”, for that the Police have a substitute: Lieutenant Xavier Corea Martínez, “head” of the aforementioned Department of Judicial Assistance and who supervised “the investigative work”.
The report prepared by the Police mentions four specific comments by the also economist: 1) “Power or Death” Posted June 12, 2021, “Social reflux and unity” on June 15, 2021, 3) a comment on a magazine publication The Economist and 4) another comment titled “repression and negotiation” on June 18, 2021.
in the comment “Power or Death” Vargas said verbatim: “Ortega Murillo knows (this verb is underlined in the prosecutor’s document) that he can lose power in transparent elections and be exposed to international justice, without any immunity provided by authoritarian power, that is why they consider that staying in power is life or death.”
According to Vargas’ analysis, the Ortega Murillos use the judiciary to persecute independent journalists and human rights defenders, and instead use the media under their control to try to sell the idea that they are defending themselves against a “foreign conspiracy.” ”.
The other comments refer to the political, social and economic crisis that Nicaragua is facing and explains, for example, in the case of the comment entitled “repression and negotiation” that the generalized repression with more arbitrary arrests has the “objective of forcing a negotiation by the fear of the potential increase in sanctions with the approval of the Renacer Law”.
Family confirms poor prison conditions for Oscar René Vargas
The Dictatorship authorized family visits of political prisoners on December 7 and 8. Vargas received his own during the first day.
The poet René Alberto Vargas Zamora, son of the sociologist, expressed concern about the state of health of the detainee, who has a pacemaker and has lost between 6 and 10 pounds, as a source close to his family was able to verify.
“The reasons for the family’s concern is that my father suffers from hypothermia, since he is in a punishment cell without a mattress or blanket, exposed to the wind, cold and the concrete on the floor. Additionally, he has a hernia between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae and his back and knees are being affected by being subjected to these conditions, ”said Vargas Zamora.
The source close to the family recounted when talking about the sociologist: “He got up with difficulty, with a gesture of pain, because he sleeps on the cement, with a very thin mat and they have him without a blanket, despite the fact that from now on I have taken the blanket daily and they tell me that they do not receive it because it is not authorized”.
“The conditions in which they keep Oscar René are very precarious, not to mention that they threaten his physical, mental and moral integrity. Even more so when Oscar René is a 76-year-old man, with high blood pressure, glaucoma and a pacemaker… an older adult (76 years old) with his delicate health situation, needs minimal humane conditions to live,” he added, asking to support a campaign for “a blanket and a mattress or mat for Oscar René”.
