The manager of the critical newspaper La Prensa de Nicaragua, Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, was sentenced this Thursday to nine years in prison for money laundering.in one of the several processes against opponents of the government of Daniel Ortega, reported the media itself.
(Read: The UN approves investigating human rights violations in Nicaragua)
A Managua judge “sentenced the general manager of the press to nine years in prison this Thursday,” reported La Prensa on its website.
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“The Judiciary at the service of the Ortega-Murillo regime sentenced Juan Lorenzo Holmann to nine years in prison and a millionaire fine. (…) We express our strong condemnation,” said the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), an NGO that accompanies the processes.
Ortega has governed the country since 2007 along with his wife Rosario Murillo as vice president since 2017. According to the newspaper, Holmann, who has been in prison since August 14 last year, “will serve his sentence until September 9, 2030.” .
Holmann’s sentence was set by Judge Nadia Tardencilla, who on March 23 found him guilty of money laundering, after a three-day trial held behind closed doors in a Managua prison.
Holman’s statement
“I am strong and I will stay that way. This is going to happen”Holmann declared after hearing the verdict, which in turn orders keeping the facilities of the newspaper La Prensa “under custody” of the authorities.
Currently, La Prensa reports only through its digital platform with limited staff and resources, due to the fact that its bank accounts were intervened. The details of the money laundering accusation that was presented by the Prosecutor’s Office are unknown, since neither the press nor the public had access to the trial.
According to the newspaper, the Prosecutor’s Office accused Holmann of hiding information from the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH), recently the target of a money laundering investigation. “There is no economic report from the police that confirms” the crime, Holmann’s defense denounced, quoted by the newspaper.
La Prensa has maintained a critical position towards the Ortega government. The newspaper, which was founded almost a century ago, also played an important role in the fight against the past dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
Holmann is the cousin of former opposition presidential hopeful Cristiana Chamorro, who was sentenced on March 22 to eight years in house arrest for money laundering and other crimes charged by the government.
According to justice, Cristiana committed the crimes through the FVBCH that she directed in the past to promote freedom of expression.
She denied the charges. The opponent, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997), was emerging as a potential rival to face the re-election of Ortega, who achieved a fourth consecutive term in the 2021 elections.
Holmann and Chamorro are part of the 46 opponents who were arrested last year in the run-up to the elections, most of them accused of attacking national integrity. The arrests were condemned by the international community, which has demanded his release.
Ortega, for his part, accused imprisoned opponents of conspiring to overthrow him, with the support of Washington. The opposition and the international community consider that it was a maneuver to continue in power.
Of the 46 detainees, at least 42 have been found guilty since the trials began on February 1. Of them, 40 have already been sentenced to sentences of up to 13 years. One of the prisoners, former Sandinista guerrilla fighter Hugo Torres, 76, died after spending several months in prison.
The trials are covered by a Law for the Defense of Sovereignty, approved by government deputies in 2020, which punishes those who support sanctions and foreign interference in internal affairs, among other acts.
The Cenidh reported that there are still three opponents to be prosecuted, including two business leaders
The repudiation from the UN
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that we have seen legal procedures in Nicaragua that do not respect due process and the necessary standards for a fair trial.
The prison sentence of the general manager of the newspaper La Prensa, Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, shows that the Nicaraguan authorities “opted a hard line instead of a negotiated solution to the crisis that began in 2018,” the UN High Commissioner said today. for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet.
“Unfortunately, it is not the first time that we have seen legal procedures in Nicaragua that do not respect due process and the necessary standards for a fair trial,” he assured.
This Thursday the UN Human Rights Council approved a resolution that will establish a group of three experts to investigate possible human rights violations in Nicaragua since April 2018.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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