Nicaraguan justice, aligned with Daniel Ortega, started this Wednesday (2) the trials of a series of political prisoners – some of whom would be candidates in the November facade election, which the dictator predictably won. The electoral farce is now moving from the polls to the courts.
The “oral and public trials”, as they were defined, weigh on 13 of the regime’s current 168 political prisoners. On Wednesday, two young men were convicted who participated in the 2018 protests in which the regime’s strong repression ended up killing more than 300 people.
Yader Parajón and Yaser Vado were classified by the Public Ministry as “criminals and delinquents [que] violated the people’s rights, compromising peace and security.” The former is part of the Blue and White National Unity and was arrested last September while trying to leave the country; Vado, arrested in November, is a dissident of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. (FSLN) and was charged with conspiracy.
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights denounced that Wednesday’s trial was fraught with irregularities, such as the lack of access by lawyers to the detainees and preventive detention having lasted much longer than the law requires (90 days). The young people’s family also did not have access to the session.
In the coming days, other important political rivals of Ortega and Sandinismo will sit in the dock, such as former minister Dora María Téllez and dissident Ana Margarita Vijil, among others. Their lawyers claim that they are being kept isolated, incommunicado, with bad food and without the right to change clothes.
The trials take place in the El Chipote detention center itself, which constitutes another irregularity, since the regular judicial establishments are not used.
Also on Wednesday, the National Assembly —equally controlled by the regime— canceled the operating permits of five universities, including Popular Nicaraguense, Paulo Freire and Politécnica de Managua. The latter became a symbol of the 2018 protests, as a movement of entrenched students against a pension reform served as the trigger for the political crisis.
At the request of the Ministry of the Government (equivalent to the Civil House), the legal records of 11 Nicaraguan civil entities linked to the defense of human rights were also suspended.
Among the canceled NGOs are some linked to the Catholic Church, the arts and small and medium-sized companies. Entities with some relation to the United States and the European Union were also shut down, which since the November 7 front election have increased the number of sanctions against the Central American country.
Ortega — one of the leaders of the Sandinista Revolution, which in the 1970s overthrew the Somoza dynasty — officially took office in January for his fifth term. After being elected president in 1984, he returned to office in 2007 through the polls and has remained in power since then, uninterruptedly.
The November election was not recognized by the majority of the international community, mainly because of the arrests, on charges of money laundering and treason, of opposing candidates. Ortega ran against five other names, but they only entered the race as part of the theater, as they were all allies. In the end, he got 76% of the vote, according to official results.
Source: Folha
