Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison after refusing to be deported

First modification: 02/11/2023 – 22:52

The stripping of his nationality, the suspension of his citizenship rights for life and 26 years and four months in prison. That was the sentence received by Rolando José Álvarez, a Nicaraguan bishop arrested last year by the Ortega regime.

The sentence came a day after Álvarez refused to be deported with 222 prisoners to the United States. A decision that provoked the ire of the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, who cataloged him as “arrogant and deranged.”

The name of Álvarez has become one of the most famous in the opposition. According to an official statement, he was accused of disseminating false information, undermining the Government, obstruction of functions and disobedience.

The bishop was transferred from his home where he had been serving house arrest since August of last year to a maximum security prison.

The sentence in the middle of a persecution

According to the sentence handed down by the judge of the second criminal trial district court of Managua, Nidia Camila Tardencilla and read by magistrate Octavio Rothschuh, president of Chamber One of the Court of Appeals of Managua, the bishop was permanently disqualified from exercising the public function on behalf of or at the service of the State of Nicaragua, as well as holding positions of popular election.

“Keep accused Rolando José Álvarez Lagos as a traitor to the country,” the document said. Which also stipulated “the loss of Nicaraguan nationality.”

As Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, points out to the US agency AP, the sentence is part of the “most severe repression against the Catholic Church in Latin America since the assassination of Guatemalan bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998”. .

“Since it became the ruling party in 1979, the Sandinistas have repressed the Catholic Church like few other regimes in Latin America,” he said.

The sentence was criticized by organizations such as the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, which repudiated the sentence “for being arbitrary and unconstitutional through a hidden, unknown and null judicial process.”

The United States demanded the release of the Nicaraguan bishop

This Saturday the United States also demanded the release of Álvarez.

“Bishop Rolando Álvarez is unjustly imprisoned and we will continue to press for his release,” a US State Department source told EFE.

In addition, he criticized the fact that the Nicaraguan citizenship of the bishop and the 222 political prisoners who did agree to be transferred to the United States in exchange for their release had been withdrawn.

“This measure violates the fundamental rights of these people,” he said.

The 222 Nicaraguans who arrived in the United States received a humanitarian permit to remain in that country for two years.

The arrest of Rolando Álvarez

Rolando Álvarez was arrested in August 2022 along with other priests and lay collaborators. His arrest was the first of a bishop since Ortega returned to power in 2007.

In fact, this week the ten-year prison sentences of seven of these religious accused of “treason against the homeland” were announced.

Since 2018, when the protests against Ortega reached their peak, Álvarez had been one of the key voices in the dialogue process with the government.

In that year, there was a huge crackdown on protesters and also direct attacks on the country’s churches by pro-government supporters. These places had been used by the students to take shelter.

Álvarez himself had said shortly after the protests broke out that he expected “a series of electoral reforms, structural changes in the electoral authority, free, fair and transparent elections, international observation without conditions”.

The representatives of the Church were called by the Government to mediate in negotiations to seek negotiated solutions to the political crisis that the country was experiencing.

However, some time later Ortega accused the Church of participating in an alleged US-backed plot to remove him from office. Since then, the repression of the Church has become a constant in the Central American country.

With EFE and AP