Priests Denis Martínez García and Leonel Balmaceda, and laywomen Carmen Sáenz and Lesbia Gutiérrez are the four people who have been added to the list of “disappeared” at the hands of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, after being kidnapped by the Sandinista Police and more than 48 hours having passed, as established by law, to present a detainee before a competent judge. With them, there are seven Nicaraguans who remain victims of the crime against humanity of forced disappearance.
Father Leonel Balmaceda, from the Jesús de Caridad parish in the municipality of La Trinidad, Estelí, was kidnapped on Saturday, August 10, and that same day the collaborators of the Curia of Matagalpa, Carmen Sáenz and Lesbia Gutiérrez, were kidnapped.
Under the law, the Sandinista Police, the material author of the kidnapping, should have referred them to a competent judge no later than the third day, however, as of the issuance of this note, on Wednesday, August 14, 96 hours have passed, which is twice the legal deadline, and the regime has not given an account of them.
On Sunday, August 11, the police at the service of the dictatorship kidnapped the priest Denis Martínez García, who works as a trainer at the interdiocesan seminary of Our Lady of Fátima in Managua, and when he was preparing to leave for Matagalpa, he was arrested by Sandinista henchmen to prevent him from celebrating mass in the Matagalpa Diocese.
As of Thursday, Father Martínez García has been detained by the regime’s gendarmes for more than 72 hours, and is therefore also a victim of forced disappearance, since he has not been brought before a competent judge nor has he been held accountable.
Exiled lawyer Yader Morazán denounced through his personal X account the condition of forced disappearance suffered by the four religious figures and demanded that the dictatorship account for them.
“More than the constitutional 48 hours have passed for the 2 priests and 2 laywomen, who were kidnapped over the weekend, to be brought before a judge. However, the four are still facing charges of the crime against humanity of “forced disappearance,”” denounced the lawyer and former official of the Judiciary, from which he deserted to join the fight against the dictatorship.
Morazán also denounced that the dictatorship’s repressive operators have not even given information to the relatives of the kidnapped. “They continue without legal assistance, without the right to visits, and the fear is such that they (the relatives) do not even dare to present a writ of habeas corpus for illegal detention,” says Morazán.
There are already seven missing
Following the forced disappearance of the two priests and the two collaborators of the Diocese of Matagalpa, the number of Nicaraguans who have been victims of this crime against humanity now totals seven.
The other three are the Miskito political leader and deputy for the Autonomous Region of the North Caribbean Coast (RACCN), Brooklyn Rivera, who has been forcibly disappeared since September 29, meaning he has been missing for almost a year.
Related news: Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo commit crimes against humanity against the church, say UN experts
The same applies to university professor and trainer of generations of communicators and sociologists Freddy Quezada, kidnapped by the repressive forces of the dictatorship on November 29 of last year. The same applies to writer and poet Carlos Bojorge, about whom the dictatorship has not given any information since his capture on January 1 of this year.
Regime escalates religious repression, reports Nicaragua Never Again Collective
The Ortega-Murillo regime has stepped up kidnappings, sieges and banishments against Catholic priests. The latest group of religious leaders kidnapped and exiled by the dictators was seven priests, who were sent to Rome.
The Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective has warned that the dictatorship continues to escalate attacks on religious freedom.
In its newsletter on religious freedom in Nicaragua, the Collective analyzes the period between April 1 and July 15 of this year and notes that, “multiple violations of religious freedom in Nicaragua continue, reflecting a panorama of increasing repression, with arbitrary arrests, direct attacks on religious leaders, stigmatization and messages of hate in official statements regarding freedom of worship.”
The bulletin recounts that, from 2018 to the present, the dictatorship has cancelled 3,781 non-profit organizations linked to the work of the Church.
