The Bishop of Matagalpa and administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, Rolando Álvarez, was sent to impeachment by the justice system of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime, which has held him captive since August 2022. The order occurred on January 10, without specific date for the process.
Serene, dressed in white and directing his gaze to the prosecutor in charge of the case, Álvarez listened to the decision of Judge Gloria María Saavedra who ordered him to be kept under house arrest in a process qualified as illegal by independent lawyers.
The hearing was held in the Augusto César Sandino auditorium of the Managua Judicial Complex with the image of the national hero behind the back of Judge Saavedra, who has a history of persecuting prisoners of conscience. In the same resolution, they also declared the official letter to Interpol for the capture of the priest Uriel Vallejos, currently in exile.
The State accused Álvarez of spreading “false news” and “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” in a process that occurs in the midst of state persecution against the Catholic Church.
Currently, in Nicaragua there are at least 235 prisoners for political reasons. The crimes are the same for which they accused dozens of prisoners of low conscience in the repressive escalation against the Church, which has left priests detained, nuns, religious and the apostolic nuncio expelled, as well as the closure of Catholic radio stations, the prohibition of processions , among others.
The regime’s accusation against Álvarez was filed on December 13, 2022, despite the fact that the Police had forcibly detained him since August 19 in Managua, when they transferred him to his family residence after the assault on the Matagalpa Curia.
Álvarez has been characterized as one of the most critical voices in the Episcopal Conference, for denouncing human rights abuses, and also for his closeness to the peasantry in northern Nicaragua.
Ortega accuses the Catholic Church of trying to carry out a coup in 2018 when thousands of citizens took to the streets to demand his resignation. Since then he has unleashed a campaign against the Church, he has policed the churches and Sandinista fanatics forced the exile of the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, Silvio Báez in 2019.
According to a press release from the Judiciary, the judge of the capital’s tenth criminal district court, Gloria María Saavedra, also admitted the exchange of evidence.
“The process is void, illegal and arbitrary,” says lawyer
“The judicial process is void from start to finish and, in addition to being void, it is illegal and arbitrary. None of its guarantees, to which every detainee, every person facing a process has the right, has been respected,” said lawyer Martha Patricia Molina, who published in 2022 a complete study on the harassment of the dictatorship against the Church. .
According to the aforementioned study, the regime has intensified its repression against the Church and has added 396 attacks between 2018 and October last yearregistering an increase in 2022 when Álvarez and his close circle of religious in Matagalpa were arrested or forced to go into exile to protect their identity.
Molina explained that he qualifies Álvarez’s arrest as arbitrary, because the laws were not complied with and rather the Police committed the crime of kidnapping at the time they arrested him.
In a recent report, CONFIDENTIAL identified at least eight illegalities committed against Álvarezamong them is also the failure to comply with the same terms of the norms approved by the dictatorship and that the details of the accusation presented by a Sandinista prosecutor against him are not even known.
For the lawyer, it is foreseeable that a “defenseless” bishop will be seen in the trial, “without the right to a defender of his full confidence”, which will cause him to face the judge and the prosecutor of the Public Ministry, as well as “the false evidence that they are going to invent and the false witnesses that are going to be part of this whole process.”
