Tegucigalpa (EFE)
In a joint statement, 74 of the 222 released prisoners expelled to the United States on February 9, and to whom the authorities have now ordered the expropriation of their assets, listed a series of violations of their human rights.
In a ruling by Chamber One of the Managua Court of Appeals released last Friday, but dated May 19, it orders the Attorney General’s Office “to immobilize and confiscate in favor of the State of Nicaragua all assets that the convicts have registered in their favor in the public registries of Real Estate and Commercial Property of the country, either in their personal capacity or as a legal entity”.
In addition to their assets, the resolution establishes that “in their personal capacity or as a legal person, all the shares and commercial companies that the convicted persons have are immobilized and confiscated in favor of the State of Nicaragua.”
Judiciary, “repression mechanism”
According to those affected, this resolution “corroborates the systematic use of the Judiciary as a mechanism of repression, where the principle of res judicata lacks validity and keeping trials open to satisfy the spirit of revenge, whims and frustrations of dictators”, in allusion to the country’s President Daniel Ortega, and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
They argued that the 222 denationalized “were tried in violation of the guarantees of due process, with accusations of false facts, with evidence fabricated by the Police and the Public Ministry in quick and secret hearings, without access to their lawyers, with concealment of the causes to the defenses, with pre-trial detention and complex processing that is inappropriate, dictated without indications of committing a crime.”
In addition, that the guilty resolutions “were equally illegitimate and the processes null and void.”
They also observed that they have not only violated the principle of innocence, but also “that a subsequent rule can only be applied when it benefits the prisoner.”
“Both the alleged crimes, as well as the penalties that are still being sentenced through resolutions in trials legally terminated and illegally kept open, did not exist in Nicaraguan legislation at the time of the final sentence,” they maintained.
“Loot Sharing”
Regarding the immobilization and confiscation of their assets and actions in favor of the State, they indicated that it violates “another universal and fundamental principle of law that establishes that the penalty does not transcend the person or the convicted person and the constitutional prohibition of the confiscation of assets.”
“The illegal confiscation is equivalent to the distribution of the loot that criminals carry out at the end of the commission of their crimes, appropriating the product thereof, and confirms the relationship between violation of human rights and corruption,” they illustrated.
Therefore, those affected declared themselves victims “of the continued persecution against citizens subjected by the sinister Nicaraguan penal system to a true judicial lynching, product of hatred against those who, together with thousands of compatriots, have demanded respect for human rights, elections freedom, freedom, democracy and transparency”.
Stateless people stripped of their property
Among the 74 expropriated prisoners who signed the document are the opposition leaders Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Félix Maradiaga and Medardo Mairena, who tried to challenge the current president, Daniel Ortega, for the Presidency in November 2021.
Also the legendary ex-guerrilla Dora María Téllez, former vice chancellors Víctor Hugo Tinoco and José Pallais, the general manager of La Prensa, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, among others.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which has worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second together with his wife, Rosario Murillo. , as vice president, with her main contenders in prison or in exile.