The Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama is located in the La Alameda urbanization, a middle-class neighborhood in Panama City. The usual tranquility of the neighborhood was interrupted since Wednesday, February 7, when it was learned that former president Ricardo Martinelli, convicted of corruption and large-scale money laundering, took refuge in the legation of the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Martinelli's employees began arriving that day with trucks and vans to unload a series of merchandise to the old house with a broken roof and walls and bars with peeling paint. According to the newspaper The Panama Press, The former president was taken with two Nisato brand air conditioners, a 32-inch television and a 65-inch RGA brand television; a large water tank, a family-sized gas grill and even his pet: a dog named Bruno.
Martinelli's presence has caused a diplomatic row between the Government of Panama and that of Ortega-Murillo. That same Wednesday, Managua granted the former president and re-election candidate political asylum. “In accordance with the Convention on Asylum of 1928 and the Convention on Political Asylum of 1933, ratified by our country, and recognizing that asylum is an institution of a humanitarian nature and that all people can be under its protection, without distinction of nationality , Nicaragua decided to grant asylum to Mr. Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal, former president of the Republic of Panama,” indicated the Sandinista Foreign Ministry.
However, Panama has flatly rejected the granting of asylum since they allege that Martinelli is not a politically persecuted person, but rather a criminal sentenced to more than ten years in prison and a fine of more than 19 million dollars for money laundering. capitals.
Managua requested the Panamanian Executive for a “safe conduct” so that Martinelli can travel to Nicaragua to take refuge. The request was denied by Panama and the Foreign Ministry summoned the Nicaraguan ambassador, journalist Consuelo Sandoval Meza, to deliver the rejection of the safe conduct request. “Any action, statement or communication made by former President Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Berrocal from the diplomatic headquarters and has repercussions or impacts on the domestic politics of Panama will be considered interference in the internal affairs of our country and, therefore, will generate diplomatic consequences,” warned the Panamanian Foreign Ministry.
130 passports for corrupt people and allies
While Martinelli remains installed in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama City, his case has revived a pattern of the Ortega-Murillo Government: making Nicaragua a refuge for corrupt people and criminals who evade justice in their countries of origin.
The most emblematic cases are that of the two former presidents of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén, who are wanted for issues of diversion of public funds and corruption. Both former leaders of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) were granted asylum along with their respective families and later received Nicaraguan nationality from the presidential couple so that they cannot be extradited.
Others who were recently asylumd and declared Nicaraguans by the Sandinista Government were Ebal Jaír Díaz Lupian and Ricardo Leonel Cardona López, two officials very close to the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, accused of drug trafficking in the United States. In 2018, Guatemalan Gustavo Adolfo Herrera Castillo was granted asylum in Nicaragua, as he was fleeing accusations by the defunct International Commission against Impunity of Guatemala (CICIG) of defrauding the Guatemalan Social Security Institute.
Ortega also provided political asylum in 2008 to Doris Torres, Martha Pérez and Lucía Morett, three guerrillas from the now defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Former guerrilla Mario Eduardo Firmenich is also another Ortega-Murillo refugee. He led the Montoneros organization in Argentina in the 1970s and was pardoned in 1990 by President Carlos Menem.
OK with a diary account Confidential, Ortega “has given away 130 nationalities to political allies and fugitives from justice” in the last two years. “Several of these naturalization processes were carried out in violation of Nicaraguan immigration laws, in the same way that they were violated by stripping 317 Nicaraguans of their nationality and making them stateless,” reports the media outlet that was confiscated by the Sandinista regime.
“Ortega is not giving asylum to people who are at political risk, to people whose rights have been violated, but rather he is sheltering criminals who have already been convicted and do not want to pay in court for the damage they did in their countries. “, criticized Luciano García, an exiled opponent in Costa Rica and director of the organization Hagamos Democracia.
Until Pablo Escobar
The decision to offer refuge to convicted persons or criminals is a long-standing pattern of the Sandinista Front and Ortega. 36 years ago, the Italian Alessio Casimirri arrived in Nicaragua, a fugitive for kidnapping and murdering Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978. Casimirri operates peacefully in Managua, specifically on Carretera Sur, where he is the owner of a fine restaurant that specializes in seafood: La Cueva del Buzo.
In the eighties, during the first Sandinista Government and when the Medellín Cartel was on the rise, drug traffickers Pablo Escobar and his partner, Carlos Lehder, found refuge in Nicaragua. “They assigned me a large diplomatic protocol house as my home, to which the only thing I took was my G3 rifle and other personal weapons, a backpack loaded with dollars, my powerful HF Global communications radio and my Zenith radio, which I used in the day to listen to music, and at night to monitor the stations of Colombia and The Voice of Germany (Deutsche Welle),” Lehder relates in his book titled Life and Death of the Medellín Cartel, which has just been published by Penguin Random House.
Now, with the political asylum case of Ricardo Martinelli developing, the opposition and exiled politician Félix Maradiaga believes that this practice distorts the purpose of political asylum, “which should protect those who are really persecuted for their ideals and not serve as a refuge for those evaded justice due to proven acts of corruption.”
“The fact that Nicaragua has become a sanctuary for individuals like Mauricio Funes, Salvador Sánchez Cerén and Ricardo Martinelli, all under serious accusations of corruption and investigated under due process, contradicts the principles of international law and stains the integrity of any system legitimate asylum. This irony, where criminals are welcomed while patriots are stripped of their nationality, erodes justice and equality before the law, perpetuating impunity and dishonoring national dignity,” Maradiaga, who a year ago was exiled along with to another 221 political prisoners. “By providing refuge to criminals, Ortega betrays his people and tarnishes national dignity, consolidating a legacy of complicity with criminality and impunity,” he insisted.
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