Opponents of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo consider that the return of the political prisoner Jose Adam Aguerri to the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as “El Chipote”, was done outside of any legal procedure. In addition, that this decision of the regime is “arbitrary and void of absolute nullity.”
The prisoner of conscience was taken from his home at noon on Wednesday, November 9, where he was under house arrest for suffering from various health problems, sources from the Civic Alliance revealed to Article 66. Aguerri was arrested on June 8, 2021 and on August 18, 2022, after 14 months in prison, he was sent to his house.
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The lawyer and member of the Political Council of the Blue and White National Unity (Unab), Juan Diego Barberena, explained to Article 66, that the actions of the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo are not in accordance with legal procedure, because the house arrest decree was issued by the judicial authority and it should be the latter that sends the accused to prison based on grounds that give origin to such decision. He stresses that Aguerri’s transfer to jail could also be a “coercive measure for the rest of the businessmen about what could happen to them.”
“Since the procedure has not been exhausted and the origin of the causes is not known, we are facing an arbitrary and null referral to Chipote of absolute nullity. I believe that this act is a message that the dictatorship sends, that now, with totalitarian control of all political and social spaces, it can carry out any type of act and misuse of power regardless of anything and without any type of counterweight, “said the opponent.
Oppositionist Daysi George West, coordinator of the Executive Council of the Civic Alliance, of which the political prisoner is a part, assures that in Nicaragua there is no rule of law and that the only laws that are in force and are applied in the country are the ” anti-democratic laws that their deputies approved”, referring to the Foreign Agents Law, the Sovereignty Law and the Special Cybercrime Law, used to persecute, imprison and convict the opposition.
«The transfer back to the prison regime of José Adan is a self-decision (which was made) all outside the law. Nicaragua is going through very difficult times, because authoritarianism is real, impunity is real, and the criminalization of any democratic act is a truth,” George told Article 66.
José Adán Aguerri, former president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), was accused of the alleged crime of “conspiring to undermine national integrity”, a legal figure invented by the regime to imprison dissidents. The Fifth Criminal District Judge, Félix Ernesto Salmerón Moreno, sanctioned by the United States for prosecuting opponents and undermining democracy, sentenced him to 13 years in prison and disqualified him from holding public office for the same period.
