For friends, prison or exile: the persecution of Daniel Ortega towards his relatives

A former guerrilla, a retired colonel, a veteran Sandinist sociologist and a former magistrate of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court of Justice. They both have things in common: At one point in their lives, they were close to Daniel Ortega and are currently being persecuted by his regime.

On November 4, 1967, Oscar René Vargas He saved the life of Daniel Ortega. Vargas, then 20 years old and one of the few members of the Sandinista Front guerrilla movement, surrendered that day with his brother Adolfo to rescue some guerrillas who were hiding in a neighborhood. from Managua. The Somoza Guard conducted a search operation of the group that, a few days earlier, had killed one of its sergeants. Daniel Ortega was part of the group.

The guards captured four guerrillas in a secure house and, they say, they were executed on the shores of Lake Managua. The Vargas brothers arrived in two vehicles at the house where Daniel Ortega and Iván Turcios took refuge and rescued them before the army took them away. "Oscar René has saved my life"I would have recognized Ortega once.

Vargas, a sociologist by profession, was appointed ambbadador of Nicaragua to France at the very beginning of Ortega's return to power. However, he fell out of favor with the regime after an interview with the newspaper The press. During the current crisis in Nicaragua, Vargas was blacklisted and escaped to Costa Rica before being arrested and prosecuted for his views against the regime.

On an old photo appears a group of Sandinista guerrillas. He was taken to Panama in 1978. Among them are Daniel Ortega and a shirtless boy: Carlos Brenes. Brenes is a retired Colonel of the Nicaraguan Army, he was honored as a hero in the eighties and He is now confined to a maximum security cell for eight months., accused of terrorism by the regime of the man who takes him in arms in the photo.

"They only let him leave his cell once every 15 days for 15 minutes." "He's a 66-year-old man, very sick." I'm afraid that's not a problem. he does not die in this cell, "said an annoyed family member who did not want us to mention his name. Security

Former army commander Joaquín Cuadra, a former army commander, is another one who appears in the photo: "Carlos Brenes was a prominent FSLN guerrilla and army founder. He was treated by the Somoza dictatorship as a delinquent, then as a hero of the revolution and again as a criminal. It's sad and sad. "

Dora Maria Téllez It is a legendary Sandinista guerrilla. He was a member of the command that was taken in August 1978 at the palace where the Congress was working. At age 22, he led a war front with about three thousand men and women in his charge. Tellez used a 30 machine gun in the only guerrilla operation in which Daniel Ortega participated in October 1977. During the revolution, he was relatively close to the Sandinista leader. Even when Téllez is separated from the sandinista frontIn an interview, he stated that he liked Ortega.

Now Téllez has been living hidden for a year. She is afraid of being imprisoned. Pro-government propaganda places it as the ubiquitous leader of all demonstrations against the Ortega regime. Her home was raided, she was the target of defamation campaigns and, according to her, they would have recorded about 30 drone flights in her house, even if she is hiding somewhere else.

"The baby has been dead for a long time"He says now." The affection has a limit. Daniel Ortega is a despicable character"

The resignation of the magistrate Rafael Solís It was a bomb last January. Solís is the godfather of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. For nearly 20 years, he was Ortega's "man" in the Supreme Court and, to a large extent, the architect of the legal scheme by which Ortega justified his unconstitutional reelection in 2011 .

In his resignation letter, addressed to Ortega and Murillo, he said: "I have always thought that mental health could be imposed on you and allow for the continuation of a political negotiation that would allow you to do it. progress of the elections and some of the other points raised by Parliament. " opposition but the reality has proven otherwise and really a State of terror with the excessive use of para-police forces or even the police themselves with weapons of war, they sowed fear in our country and there is no longer any right to respect, with the inevitable consequences of the installation and consolidation of at least one dictatorship with characters of absolute two-kings monarchy that made to disappear all the powers of the state, leaving to the judicial power to which I belong, reduced to its minimal expression ".

The letter was known on January 10, when Solís was in Costa Rica starting an exile in which he still maintains. "I will not back down," he says.

Daniel Ortega has been a man of few friends. During the seven years that he spent in prison, he built his small and main circle of friends. The group of eightthey tell them. Among them, there are only four alive.

Carlos Guadamuz It was one of eight, and Friend closest to Ortega. This "bloody" friendship, as he was formerly known as Guadamuz, was broken in 1996 when he was running for the Sandinista Front at Managua and Ortega refused him any support. Guadamuz and Ortega met with local children, joined the Sandinista Front together and shared the prison. During the eighties, Guadamuz was in charge of the official radio and was perceived as a personal representative of Daniel Ortega. The break with Ortega meant to Guadamuz his loss of grace and, for many, his subsequent badbadination.

In February 2004, a tyrant was waiting for Guadamuz at the entrance of the television channel where he broadcast an acid criticism program and shot him in front of his teenage son. The rapid reaction of the minor allowed the capture of the gunman, who was nevertheless treated with a silk glove by Nicaraguan justice. Sentenced to 21 years in prison, he left after four years to benefit from the regime of family cohabitation, among other reasons, for "the stress of prison" he suffered.

For Oscar René Vargas, "The political mutation of Ortega has been like the skin change of a snake. When the animal has grown, it must abandon the old skin that prevents it. (Only) keeps the shape of its last occupant. "

Neither Vargas, who has already saved the life of Ortega, nor Rafael Solís, his godfather, think for the moment to return to Nicaragua. There are no conditions, says Vargas. Both are convinced that negotiations with the opposition will lead to an agreement offering guarantees of return to the exiles. "But that does not seem so close to the stagnant dialogue that he is," thinks Solís.

Dora María Téllez has promised never to leave Nicaragua. "At all costs," he says.

Vargas is afraid of being arrested when he returns, Tellez to be killed when he goes underground. "Maybe I will not get caught. But kill me. It is the cheapest. Let's be crazy, like Carlos Guadamuz. They are experts in this field, "he says.