One of the most important opposition figures in Nicaragua, Christiana Chamorro, was sentenced Monday to eight years in prison. He thought he would triumph over Daniel Ortega in the November 2021 presidential election, but was arrested six months earlier and placed under house arrest on the orders of Nicaraguan justice.
Ms. Chamorro, 68, who was convicted on March 12 of money laundering in a criminal case, will remain in house arrest, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH).
Her persecution by Daniel Ortega’s state apparatus prevented her from running in the November elections, which she was said to be favored in opinion polls.
According to the court where she was tried for seven days inside the infamous El Chipote prison, the offenses against her were committed through the Violeta Barios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH), a training center for the freedom of the press. for about twenty years.
The foundation was used to raise money from abroad for destabilization operations by the government of Daniel Ortega and his vice president and wife, Rosario Mourillo, according to prosecutors.
Her brother Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, who was also found guilty, will serve nine years in prison, most likely in El Chipote, where he has been held since his arrest.
Two former FVBCH employees, as well as Ms. Chamorro’s driver, were sentenced to up to 13 years in prison.
Fines of “millions” were imposed on the opposition and all three of their former employees at the same time. They are “impossible to pay” and are expected to be “converted into life sentences”, according to CENIDH.
Christiana Chamorro, who was arrested on June 2, 2021, denied the charges against her, claiming that her prosecution was due to her wanting to “serve the Nicaraguan people” by running in the presidential election.
“When you take a position that endangers the power of the dictatorship, you expect everything, even the worst,” Ms Chamorro told AFP in late May.
“The people give me the first place in the voting intentions. That is why the dictator ordered me to be prosecuted, it is his revenge against the people,” he had also claimed.
A total of seven opposition candidates for the presidency and 39 others were arrested in the months leading up to the election in which Daniel Ortega, the 76-year-old former Sandinista guerrilla leader, was elected for a fourth consecutive term without any serious opposition.
Some 30 opposition members have now been sentenced by the courts, more than 20 of whom have been sentenced to between eight and 13 years in prison. One of them, Hugo Torres, a hero of the guerrillas who fought the Somosa dictatorship but later joined the opposition to Daniel Ortega, died in custody in February.
Mr Ortega’s re-election was not recognized by much of the international community, notably the Organization of American States (OAS), the United States and the European Union.
Cristiana Chamorro is the daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997), who won Mr Ortega in the 1990 elections.
Her father, journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, was assassinated in Managua in January 1978 for opposing the Somosa dictatorship, which remained in power for almost half a century, until the victory of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FS) in 1979. .
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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