Nicaragua’s Ortega government puts the political opposition on trial

Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have dismantled the country’s democracy with startling speed. After crushing nationwide demonstrators in 2018, their government arrested protest leaders, shut down news organizations and stripped the legal status of civil society groups. Last year, with elections looming, authorities intensified the crackdown, jailing around four dozen opposition politicians, journalists and business leaders.

Nicaragua has become the most dramatic example of the crumbling of democracy in Central America, a trend that the Biden administration says is contributing to surging migration.

The trials are “an attack on all types of dissidence,” said Carolina Jiménez, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group. She said they lacked even the minimum standards of due process. “We know these sentences aren’t pronounced by an independent justice system, but by the presidential couple.”

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Nicaraguan authorities have accused the jailed activists of working with foreign powers to undermine the government. “These are the same people who promoted and directed terrorist actions in the failed coup in 2018,” the attorney general’s office said last month, referring to anti-government protests. More than 350 people were killed in those clashes, mostly by security forces, according to human rights groups.

The trials began Feb. 1. The presidential press office didn’t respond to an email this week seeking comment.

So far, all 21 of those tried have been found guilty. They have been sentenced to up to 13 years in prison. Among the evidence that has been presented are Twitter statements and retweets, the defendants’ interviews with journalists and even a phony Facebook page, according to relatives and activists.

“This is a judicial farce,” said Ana Lucía Álvarez, the sister of Tamara Dávila, a political activist on trial. “These trials have no validity, because these people are innocent.”

The State Department said Tuesday that the trials “are intended to terrorize and discourage other Nicaraguans from exercising their rights.” The Biden administration denounced the November presidential vote as a “pantomime election” and said Washington would “use all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to support the people of Nicaragua and hold accountable the Ortega-Murillo government.” Yet a series of sanctions imposed on Ortega’s family and allies appear to have had little effect.

The Biden administration pledged to put democracy-building at the heart of its Latin America policy, but Jiménez said it was consumed with domestic problems. “And the United States has become a country fighting to save its own democracy,” she said. “This perhaps makes it less easy to promote democracy in other places.”

The seven Nicaraguans who faced trial on Tuesday include the three potential presidential contenders — Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, a former ambassador to Washington, and Félix Maradiaga, a Harvard-educated political scientist. Also on the docket were José Adán Aguerri, former head of the country’s business association, José Pallais, who had served as deputy foreign minister, and Dávila and another activist, Violeta Granera. All were accused of treason.

Chamorro, an economist, is the nephew of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, a member of a Nicaraguan publishing dynasty that had opposed the Somoza dictatorship during its 44-year reign. She defeated Ortega in presidential elections in 1990. Her daughter Cristiana Chamorro, viewed as another top candidate in last year’s elections, is under house arrest and expected to also face trial soon.

Ortega, 76, was a leader of the leftist Sandinista rebels that toppled the government of President Anastasio Somoza in 1979. He returned to power in elections in 2007.

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Family members say the prisoners have been poorly treated, with insufficient food and little access to their relatives. One, Luis Rivas, a prominent businessman arrested last June, has lost 44 pounds in prison and has not been able to see his five children, who range in age from 5 to 19, according to a person close to him. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear his family could suffer reprisals. Rivas was found guilty on Monday, and is awaiting sentencing.

The prisoners “are in total isolation,” Álvarez said. “They can’t see the sun. They have no idea what’s going on around them.”

Among those found guilty so far are Lesther Aleman, a 24-year-old student leader who became famous for confronting Ortega in a public meeting in 2018, and Dora María Téllez, 65, a onetime Sandinista rebel who led a brazen attack on the National Palace under Samoza in 1978.

Last week, one of the most storied prisoners died in captivity. Hugo Torres, was a retired army general who once fought with the Sandinistas. In 1974, he look part in a raid on a party in which the guerrillas captured members of the Somoza government, whom they later traded for detained rebels, including Ortega. Torres later became a strong critic of the president.

The Nicaraguan government said Torres had suffered from an unspecified illness. His death raised alarm among human rights groups and opposition activists about deteriorating conditions in the jails.

“I am 73,” Torres said in a video released shortly before his detention eight months ago. “I never thought that at this stage of my life, I’d be fighting — in a civic and peaceful way — against a new dictatorship.”

Sheridan reported from Mexico City.

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