At around five in the afternoon last Thursday, October 13, a riot patrol force entered the house of the priest Enrique Martinez Gamboa, 64 years old. The priest was alone in his house and seeing that the riot police broke down the fence of the property, he ran to take refuge in his room.
The police entered the house with violence and broke down the door of the room where the priest was.
“They got to the room where he was and started kicking the door. They broke down the door, broke it down, kicked and shoved him out, and put him in the truck. He told them: ‘murderous policemen’, he also shouted several times: ‘Long live Christ the King!’, “They are taking me by force!”, they confided to CONFIDENTIAL sources close to the detainee’s family arbitrarily, since the agents did not show any arrest warrant or explain the reasons for the arrest.
The sources assure that the marks of the officers’ boots can be seen on the door destroyed by the riot police.
Likewise, they detail that minutes before the riot police will carry out this operation, some motorcyclists dressed in civilian clothes were going around the sector where the priest lives. Then the truck with riot police appeared, who entered the Altos de San Pedro urbanization, located on Carretera Sur, where the religious resides.
Martínez sensed that at any moment he could be arrested, due to the repressive escalation of the Daniel Ortega regime against the Catholic Church, which in the last six months has left 11 religious imprisoned, including Bishop Rolando Álvarez. Also because he had been harassed by the National Police at other times. “On several occasions they had followed him, but they had never done anything to him,” the sources explain.
The parishioners who listened to the father’s homilies also feared reprisals against him, because of the prophetic voice that characterized him. In 2018, his voice was heard during the massive civic protests, when in the march on May 30 of that year he said:
“Nicaraguans are the majority and we have a clean heart, not blood-stained hands like others. Don’t cower, don’t cower, don’t cower. Long live Nicaragua! Long live the mothers of those who fell on April 19! Long live decent doctors and journalists!”
Priest is detained “in his underpants”
The same day of the violent arrest, the priest was transferred to the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as El Chipote. His family asked about him, but the answer was that “they couldn’t tell him anything.”
However, in El Chipote they received bottles of water for three days and two underpants. His relatives wanted to deliver sheets, short shirts and compression stockings that the priest uses due to his circulation problems, but they did not accept any of these items.
“He has been without socks these days that he has been in prison and they do not accept short-sleeved shirts, nor sheets, he is practically naked, only in his underpants, it is a way of torturing people, because imagine someone who is used to always walking dressed, always covered, being in that nude situation, because that hits him psychologically, ”say the sources.
Martinez is chronically ill. He suffers from diabetes, hypertension and has kidney damage. He also has circulation problems: a few years ago a thrombus formed, a blood clot, which complicated his health and for which he “was hospitalized on the verge of death,” the sources detail. Due to this affectation, he must use compression stockings to prevent new thrombi from forming that could risk his life again, because if they travel to areas of the body such as the brain, they can cause death.
“He takes about ten pills a day because he has various illnesses. Every 15 days they send him to do some tests and the internist (doctor) assesses him. In fact, the day they took him away he was due for tests, but we don’t know if he passed the consultation, we don’t know how his health is, ”they explain.
The priest Enrique Martínez Gamboa belongs to the Diocese of León, but he was exercising his ministry in Managua, and on some occasions he celebrated mass in the Santa Marta Church, according to religious sources. The priest was also chaplain of La Salle.
The dictatorship in Nicaragua has kidnapped eleven religious during the second half of 2022, when a new chapter of direct aggression against the Catholic Church began. The first was the priest Manuel García Rodríguez, allegedly convicted of raping a woman.
This week the regime scheduled for December 1 the oral and public trial against three priests, a deacon, two seminarians and a cameraman who were kidnapped by the Police, along with Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, in the Matagalpa Curia for 15 days. last August.
