Jailed Nicaraguan Bishop Alvarez Appears “Deteriorated”
Priests and opposition leaders say he looks “pale, mistreated and lethargic.” Monsignor Silvio Baez warned: “The dictatorship mustn’t imagine they can clean up their crime.”
HAVANA TIMES – A Nicaraguan priest who was stripped of his nationality by Nicaraguan authorities, along with opposition organizations in exile, all stated on January 3rd that they observed physical deterioration in the photos of imprisoned Bishop Rolando Alvarez that the Ortega-Murillo regime exhibited.
On the evening of January 2nd, the Ortega government had made public a series of photos of the Monsignor, purportedly showing the excellent care and attention he was receiving.
Exiled parish priest Edwing Roman, who has been very critical of the Sandinista government, declared on his social networks: “The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo” has put on display “the physical deterioration of Nicaraguan bishop Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, unjustly in prison.”
Similarly, a group of Nicaraguan opposition organizations in exile who belong to the Unity for Democracy Platform stated: “Once again the dictatorship exhibited their level of repression to the world, through the publication of photos showing the body of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, clearly pale, mistreated and lethargic.”
The opposition group Nicaraguan University Alliance, made up of exiled Nicaraguan students and alumni, added in a message: “the prison conditions of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez are unacceptable.”
Alvarez was first detained in August 2022. Then when he refused to abandon the country together with 222 other political prisoners in February 2023, he was summarily tried, found guilty of “treason,” sentenced to 26 years, 4 months in prison, and stripped of his nationality and rights as a citizen for life. He has been held incommunicado all that time. The photos, according to the Ortega regime, are evidence that his state of health is “good.”
Bishop Silvio Baez calls it a “staging”
Th images were released the same day the United States demanded that Daniel Ortega “immediately” free Alvarez, who’s 57. The previous day, during the year’s first Angelus prayer, Pope Francis expressed his “concern” for the detention of numerous Catholic priests in Nicaragua.
“The dictatorship mustn’t think they can clean up their crime by showing Mons. Rolando Alvarez in this new, cynical, and irresponsible staging. They should understand that no one believes them! The only just action is for Mons. Alvarez to be released, together with Mons. Isidoro Mora, his seminary students, and the other priests,” said Father Silvio Baez, former auxiliary bishop of Managua, currently exiled in the United States, wrote on social media.
In the view of Felix Maradiaga, another Nicaraguan opposition leader now stateless, the regime displayed the photos of Alvarez “in an attempt to change the narrative and give the impression that the Bishop, who has been unjustly jailed, is receiving supposedly normal treatment.”
“Nonetheless, the truth is undeniable: Monsignor Alvarez and the arbitrarily arrested priests should be freed, and no photo will be able to erase the arbitrary nature [of their detention], nor the inhumane and humiliating treatment the abducted priests and all the political prisoners are being subjected to,” Maradiaga indicated.