The ecclesiastics, arrested in August 2022, did not want to be expelled to the United States in exchange for his freedom, like so many other political prisoners.
By Angeline Montoya
He was one of the only ones, the day before his conviction, to have refused to get on the plane which expelled more than 200 political prisoners to Washington. The Daniel Ortega regime has made an example of it, and a warning: Bishop Rolando Alvarez was sentenced on Friday February 10 to twenty-six years and four months in prison for “conspiracy aimed at undermining national integrity” and “Propagation of false news”. The ecclesiastics has been fallen from its Nicaraguan nationality and its civil rights to perpetuity.
Arrested on August 19, 2022 and under house arrest since then, the bishop of Matagalpa (130 kilometers north of Managua) was transferred to the Modelo prison, in the east of the capital. He was one of the most critical voices against the government, and the first religious of this rank to be arrested. Another bishop, Silvio Baez, had been forced to exile in 2019. For President Daniel Ortega – in power between 1979 and 1990 and since 2007 – the Catholic Church is an accomplice of an attempted coup oudie by Washington. At the beginning of the month, five priests were sentenced to ten years in prison.
Rolando Alvarez should have been expelled to the United States, Thursday, February 9, with 222 other opponents released by the regime, also deprived of their civil rights and deprived of their nationality. But while he was in the tail to get on the plane, “the character Alvarez began to say that he would not go,” said the head of state during a speech of almost a Time, dealing with the bishop of “arrogant”, “unbalanced”, “mad” and “energumene”.
“foreign powers”
Daniel Ortega denied that the massive liberation of opponents – to which Madrid proposed to offer Spanish nationality – the result of a “negotiation” with Washington, which imposed sanctions on Managua after the repression of the demonstrations Antigovernmental of 2018, which had left 355 dead. “On various occasions, I said that all these people in prisons, arrested for attacks on sovereignty, to peace, against the Nicaraguan people, were agents of foreign powers, and [that these] could bring them back [ at home] “, he said. It was his wife and vice-president, Rosario Murillo, who would have suggested that he offer the American ambassador to Managua, Kevin Sullivan, to “regain his mercenaries”, “without asking for anything in exchange”.
Pope Francis, who admitted on Sunday, having been “struggled” by the news of the condemnation of M gr alvarez, said that he prayed for him and for the expelled opponents and a renewed his calls “to the patient exercise of dialogue”.
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