Daniel Ortega’s regime ordered the arrest of writer and former vice-president Sergio Ramírez

Daniel Ortega’s regime ordered the arrest of writer and former vice-president Sergio Ramírez on Wednesday. The Nicaraguan intellectual is accused of acts which promote and incite hatred and violence.

The prosecution has requested an arrest and search warrant for Ramírez Mercado, 79, who is outside Nicaragua and he had already announced that he would not return to the country to avoid government reprisals after being summoned by the prosecution.

The prosecution indicated that it also accused Ramírez Mercado “of having committed acts which promote and incite hatred and violence”, for having received, through the Luisa Mercado Foundation, money from the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, “whose main members of its board of directors are accused of embezzlement, money laundering, property and assets”.

According to the public prosecutor, Most of these funds “were intended to finance one of the main programs of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation,” Programa Medios para Nicaragua “, but in practice they were intended for purposes other than those of the Foundation ”.

In July, Ramírez called for “international solidarity” in the face of wave of arrests against opposition political leaders and businessmen.

“The clumsy hand of dictatorial injustice in Nicaragua persecutes and takes hostage righteous people, worthy women and men of all walks of life and terrorizes their homes.Ramírez denounced.

“Fully identified with them,” added the 2017 Cervantes Prize, “I call for international solidarity”.

Ramírez was vice-president of Nicaragua under the first Ortega government (1985-1990), but in the mid-1990s he distanced himself from the leftist leader and founded, along with other intellectuals and former guerrillas, the Sandinista Movement of renovation (MRS), banned in 2009 as a party and currently called the Unamos movement. Ramírez has been removed from political activity since 1996.

“Elections where the majority of candidates who can oppose Ortega are in prison, cannot be elections,” he told the writer in an interview with The Associated Press End of June.

“Many people are leaving the country in droves, as had not happened since 2018 and there is a lot of fear among the population», He noted. “Nobody knows who will be next (detained by the police), nobody knows which house will be searched.”

The day before last night, Daniel Ortega described the opponents detained for alleged treason against the country as “terrorists”, and the Nicaraguan bishops and priests criticizing the regime “of demons in cassocks” and “satanics”.

According to the president, his adversaries “were preparing to remake history (from April 2018) and justice is done, that’s all, justice is done against the terrorists”.

As part of the electoral process, the Nicaraguan authorities arrested and / or tried 36 opposition leaders and independent professionals, including seven who announced their intention to run in the presidential elections in November, in which Ortega is seeking them. a new. .re-election.

In the November elections, Ortega, a former Sandinista guerrilla on the verge of 76 years old and returned to power in 2007 after coordinating a board of directors from 1979 to 1984 and presiding the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990, is running for his fifth term., fourth in a row, and second with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

On the other hand, last Tuesday, relatives of presidential candidates and opposition leaders detained for “conspiracy” expressed concern about the physical deterioration of their relatives, like the isolation suffered by three important adversaries.

Worries “the physical deterioration of all (the inmates), which results in extreme weight loss (between 12 and 36 kilos), gastrointestinal illnesses due to poor nutrition, which has led them to a state of severe malnutrition“, Denounced the relatives of the detainees in a press release, read in a virtual press conference.

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