Nicaraguans were surprised to learn that the government had put 222 political prisoners on a plane in the early morning to Washington. It was noteworthy that the Catholic Bishop of Matagalpa was not on that list. When he refused to go into exile he was immediately removed from house arrest to imprisonment. The other person who refused to go was Fanor Alejandro Ramos, who is a sharpshooter and was jailed when he refused to shoot at students in 2018.
By Wilfredo Miranda, El País
February 9, 2023
The most critical religious of the Ortega regime has been transferred from the house where he was under house arrest to the feared prison of El Chipote.
The name of the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, does not appear on the list of 222 political prisoner who were banished by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo the morning of February 9. He faces a political trial for the supposed crimes of “conspiracy and propagation of false news.” According to sources in the Catholic Church, the police took him out of the building where he was under house arrest and transferred him to the feared prison of El Chipote, after refusing to board the plane that took the prisoners to Washington.
“Let them be free, I am serving the sentence,” said Bishop Álvarez, according to Catholic sources. His family had not seen the prelate since he was taken from the home. This past Tuesday it became known that the Sandinista judge, Nadia Camila Tardencilla Rodríguez, moved up the political trial of the Catholic leader to February 15 when it was initially scheduled for March 28. Religious sources have coincided that this case has been an impasse for two fundamental reasons: the first is that the Ortega-Murillo regime had offered him “exile or jail”, but he had flatly refused to “abandon his country.” A decision that the bishop maintained this Thursday with the banishment of the political prisoners.
Bishop Álvarez, the most critical voice of Catholicism in the face of human rights violations in Nicaragua, was arrested in August 2022 along with six religious and one layperson when a police raid broke into the priests house in Matagalpa in the early morning. In his popular homilies he criticized the Sandinista abuses. The religious leader has been characterized by a strong and decisive character, to the point that before his arrest he had knelt down in front of an armed police line which surrounded him in Matagalpa.
Up to now, the high Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican have maintained absolute silence in the face of the religious persecution in Nicaragua which now includes nine priests and religious sentenced in a climate which prohibits processions of different parishes and an increasing number of parish priests in exile.
According to judicial sources consulted by EL PAÍS, the Prosecutor “is fabricating evidence” against Bishop Álvarez, based on his critical homilies which were shared over social media, for the purpose of “destabilizing” the Government. In other words, they profile the bishop as a “great conspirator.”
Meanwhile, after the arrival of the plane taking people into exile in the US capital, the secretary of state of the United States, Anthony Blinken, said that “the liberation opens the door to dialogue with Managua.” The official of the Biden administration added that “the events today are the product of US diplomacy”, and that his country will continue supporting the Nicaraguan people.