94 days have passed since the only and last time that the Daniel Ortega regime publicly showed Monsignor Rolando AlvarezOn that occasion, the dictatorship allowed his two brothers to visit and exhibited him in photographs and videos through its propaganda media. Since then, the condition of the Bishop of Matagalpa is unknown.
The religious leader has been locked up in the “La Modelo” prison in Tipitapa since February 9, the date on which he refused to be exiled, along with 222 other former political prisoners, to the United States. This Tuesday he turns 312 days as a prisoner of conscience.
It was recently learned that the Ortega dictatorship is holding Monsignor Álvarez in cell 19 of module 3-1 of the maximum security space of the men’s prison in Managua.
Related news: They demand that the Ortega dictatorship put an end to the kidnapping of Monsignor Álvarez
A prison source explained to the digital media Divergentes that The head of the Catholic Church is in “El Infiernillo”, one of the six modules that are in the maximum security space called 300, because there they reach approximately 300 inmates, in some 156 cells. The monsignor’s cell is the same as that of the other inmates: three meters long by three meters wide, with two cots each and a hole for the inmates to relieve themselves.
According to the source, the bishop of Matagalpa is watched by guards 24 hours a day and his cell is searched daily to “avoid any communication with the other inmates of La Modelo.”
For her part, the researcher Martha Patricia Molina warned that Monsignor Rolando Alvarez could be “not in good health” after spending more than 10 months under “kidnapping”, and called on the world to put more pressure on the regime to stop religious persecution in the country.
“Because of the habit of the Nicaraguan Penitentiary System of physically and psychologically torturing the kidnapped, he fears that monsignor is not well», alerted Molina.
In turn, the author of the report “Nicaragua: A Persecuted Church” asked the international community to demand that the Sandinista dictatorship immediately release the prelate and cease the persecution against the Catholic Church.
