Nicaragua: Opponents 90-Day Preventive Detention to Expire
Uncertainty grows over the future of the Ortega regime’s political prisoners when the initial 90-day deadline set by the Government for ongoing investigation is met.
HAVANA TIMES –This week, Marcos Fletes and Walter Gomez, former workers of the now-defunct Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation in Nicaragua, will become the first two of those considered political prisoners to complete the 90 days of preventive detention ordered by the Public Ministry.
The entity alleged that they were being investigated for suspected money laundering, and, since being accused they have been held incommunicado from their families and defense attorneys.
The president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, Vilma Nuñez, who is handling the case of one of the detainees, explained to the Voice of America that the only thing certain about the future of the detainees is uncertainty. She said the cases don’t merit a legal analysis, and have been developed under the discretion and decisions of the Nicaraguan Government.
“We have to start from the fact that here there is no law, that the only rule is the ambition of the pair of ruling dictators and their puppets with judicial power,” Nuñez explained.
She added that she cannot “give a legal answer and say what comes next, because the law is ‘theirs’: they are imposing forced disappearance. Total uncertainty.”
While family members and lawyers anxiously await the deadlines set by the Government, the situation of the political prisoners seem to be getting worse every day.
The Police have also begun arresting defense attorneys, as in the case of Roger Reyes, the representative of jailed presidential hopeful Felix Maradiaga.
Alexa Zamora, a leader of the Blue and White National Unity, denounced the arrests of the defense attorneys.
“This is part of the systematic repression that continues to grow and is substantiated by the massive kidnapping of members of the opposition, without cause, without arrest warrants and without charges against them.”
Along with the former workers of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, it is expected that at the beginning of next week it will be Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, former director of this organization, who will reach the deadline of house arrest established for the investigation against her.
The state is required to provide information on the condition of these political prisoners, but thus far has failed to do so.