Nicaraguan Human Rights Organization to accuse Ortega in the International Courts

Alvaro Leiva of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH) traveled to the United States this weekend to seek contacts for filing an accusation before the international courts.

By Emiliano Chamorro Mendieta  (La Prensa)

Before leaving to accuse Ortega and his regime, Leiva assured that they have fully documented the human rights violations and crimes committed.

HAVANA TIMES – Alvaro Leiva Sanchez, executive secretary for the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH), left for the United States this past weekend (July 13-14) to begin contacts needed to formally accuse Nicaraguan rulers Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the Nicaraguan peoples’ human rights before the international criminal courts. 

These crimes were all committed in the context of the civic protests that began in April 2018 and that were violently dissolved by bullets at the hands of Ortega’s police and the paramilitary forces the regime armed and commanded. 

Leiva told La Prensa that before leaving to accuse Ortega and his regime, his organization spent a year fully documenting all the human rights violations and crimes committed during the repression. They also based their accusations on the testimony of protected witnesses who deserted from the Army or the National Police.

In the opinion of retired military officer Roberto Samcam, the Nicaraguan Army has an obligation to follow up on these activities under the Constitutional rule that in Nicaragua no armed bodies outside of the police and the army can be allowed.

Alvaro Leiva has been living as an exile in Costa Rica since August 2018. He explained that the denunciation of Ortega and the legal action against Ortega, Murillo and active high officials of the Police and Army is being conducted within the framework of the Nica Act established by the United States, with its provisions against corruption and human rights violations.

Valuable international reports

The objective, the human rights defender explains, is to promote criminal accusations against Ortega and all of those people and institutions that participated in crimes against humanity, genocide and human rights violations.  These have been documented in the ANPDH’s own reports, and also in reports from international organizations such as the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and others.  These have calculated the number of dead as at least 326 people, plus more than 2,000 wounded and hundreds arrested.

“These actions began with the opening of a group for work and research, in coordination with other legal figures of recognized prestige in the United States. The goal is to introduce proceedings in the US Federal Courts against Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Rosario Murillo and other high functionaries of the Ortega-Murilla regime in Nicaragua who have committed crimes against humanity, genocide and human rights violations against innocent Nicaraguan victims,” stated Leiva in an interview with La Prensa held in Costa Rica, a few days before his trip to the United States to prepare the case.

Alvaro Leiva, in addition to serving as executive secretary for the ANPDH, is also a “Delegate of the Human Rights and International Missions Program for Nicaragua and Central America” of the Canadian Human Rights International Organization (CHRIO).

 “The Ortega-Murillo regime must respond before the international criminal justice system, because in the exercise of his functions as Nicaraguan president, Ortega violated the Constitution and the laws to promote and inflict pain, mourning, and bloodshed. This translates into crimes against humanity and violations of human rights,” Leiva stated.

Grave crimes

“Ortega and his regime have committed grave crimes against the Nicaraguan people. Everything that has occurred in Nicaragua right up until today in terms of killings, captures, abductions, abuses of power, violations to human rights, harassment and repression, are products of a system that promotes active crimes against the public order, and crimes against the Constitution,” declared Alvaro Leiva, executive secretary of the Nicaraguan Association for the Protection of Human Rights (ANPDH).