Five Nicaraguan Catholic priests, who had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison for crimes considered "treason against the homeland", were released this Thursday and expelled to USAaccording to a resolution of the Court of Appeals of Managua.
It's about the priests Ramiro Tijerinorector of the Juan Pablo II University and in charge of the San Juan Bautista parish; Jose Luis Diaz and Sadiel Eugarriosfirst and second vicar of the Matagalpa de San Pedro Cathedral, respectively, and deacon Raul Vega Gonzalezall from the diocese of Matagalpa, in northern Nicaragua.
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Also the presbyter Oscar Danilo Benavidez Davila, parish priest of the Espíritu Santo parish, in the municipality of Mulukuku, Autonomous Region of the North Caribbean of Nicaragua. In addition the seminarians Darvin Leiva Mendoza and Melkin Ryeand the catholic cameraman Sergio Cardenas.
This group of religious is part of a group of 222 people considered political prisoners by humanitarian organizations who were ordered by Chamber One of the Managua Court of Appeals to be immediately deported to the United States "as traitors to the homeland."
That resolution, read by the president of Chamber One of the Court of Appeals of Managua, magistrate Octavio Rothschuhalso ordered perpetual disqualification from exercising public office and positions of popular election and suspended their citizenship rights for life.
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The group of religious and lay people, together with the bishop Rolando Alvarez, who he was not included in the list of those released and expelledwere arrested in the early hours of Friday, August 19, by police officers in the episcopal palace of the diocese of Matagalpa, after having been confined for 15 days, and since then they have been in the "El Chipote" police jail, officially known as the Directorate of Judicial Aid, with the exception of the bishop who is under "household protection".
Álvarez, 56 years old and very critical of the Government of Daniel Ortegawill face the trial to answer for the same crimes as the priests on February 15.
A political source told EFE that the hierarch, who has been presented without his religious clothing in hearings and is the first bishop arrested and accused since Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, did not accept being expelled from his country.
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President Ortega called the Nicaraguan bishops who acted as mediators in a national dialogue seeking a peaceful solution to the crisis that the country has been experiencing since April 2018 as "terrorists."
Relations between the Sandinistas and the Catholic Church in Nicaragua have been marked by friction and mistrust in the last 43 and a half years.
