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20-10-2023
MANAGUA: Nicaragua’s government has released a dozen Catholic priests jailed on a variety of charges and sent them to Rome, following negotiations with the Vatican.
A government statement released late on Wednesday said the 12 were flown to Rome in the afternoon, following “fruitful conversations” with Catholic leaders in Nicaragua as well as with unnamed individuals in the Vatican.
The statement said the deal showed “the permanent will and commitment to find solutions”.
President Daniel Ortega, a leftist who has been in power since 2006, has sought to crack down on opposition since 2018 when social security cuts triggered mass antigovernment protests.
Ortega has maintained that the church aided the protests, which he considered an attempted coup, and this year stepped up a crackdown on Catholic clergy and church-affiliated institutions.
He has previously accused church leaders of seeking to overthrow his government, while judicial authorities have arrested priests and accused some of committing treason, among other crimes.
Nicaraguan clergy have also reported government surveillance of services and assaults.
In February, Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who criticized the 2018 crackdown and was ultimately arrested during a pre-dawn church raid in 2022 for allegedly “organizing violent groups”, was sentenced to 26 years in prison on treason charges.
His sentencing came shortly after 222 political prisoners were sent to the United States in a deal brokered by the US government.
Alvarez had refused to get on that flight. Nicaragua’s government later stripped those prisoners of their citizenship.
His name was not among the 12 priests flown to Rome on Wednesday.
Ortega, who has been in and out of power since 1979, when he helped lead the overthrow of the Somoza family dictatorship, has been accused of dismantling Nicaragua’s fragile democracy.
Last month, the United Nations-appointed Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua said the human rights situation had worsened in the previous six months, citing the erosion of academic freedom and closure of universities. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
