One day after his 57th birthday, the prison authorities of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo showed Bishop Rolando Álvarez through 34 photographs and a video. The material was released on the night of November 28 and responded to the demand of national and international organizations to provide proof of the life of the religious leader, sentenced to 26 years in prison for the political crimes of “treason against the country,” harming national integrity and “spreading fake news.”
The last time that the regime displayed the bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa – the highest authority of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua under arrest – was on March 25, 2023. During that period, human rights organizations denounced, the prelate has been kept in a cell under total isolation in the La Modelo prison, located in Ticuantepe, a municipality adjacent to the capital Managua.
Given the repeated claims for the bishop’s isolation, the Ministry of the Interior released the photos and video in a 20-page press release highlighting that Monsignor Álvarez is “receiving preferential treatment.” The images show six alleged family visits in prison and one for medical care. In all of them, Álvarez is thinner and paler.
“As can be seen in the video and photographs, the conditions of confinement are preferential and the regime of medical consultations, family visits and receiving packages is strictly complied with, contrary to what slanderous campaigns try to make us believe,” the Government published. it’s a statement.
The advertisement shows Álvarez in a living room decorated with a television, sofas and a table on which there is food. However, released political prisoners consulted by EL PAÍS agreed that the space that the regime presumes to be the bishop’s cell is actually a visiting room for foreign prisoners or special visits in La Modelo.
“It is a staging, a montage,” explains one of the political prisoners exiled in February 2023 and who requests anonymity for the safety of his family in Nicaragua. “That room is used for visits by foreign prisoners who are held in Gallery 300. Embassy officials come there to visit detainees from their countries and relatives of some privileged prisoners. But anyone who has been imprisoned knows, by seeing those images, that no one lives in that supposed cell, because everything is in perfect condition, clean. There are no traces of anyone inhabiting it daily. It’s like those setups they do in North Korea: everything is prefabricated to get rid of pressure,” he says.
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Bishop Álvarez, according to complaints from human rights organizations, has been confined to a maximum security cell in La Modelo prison since February 2022. However, the regime’s closure is such that it does not allow international organizations to enter. to corroborate the real situation of the religious.
Luciano García, an opponent exiled in Costa Rica, says that he knew that room where Álvarez was presented. At the time, he claims, it was built as a cell to house officials of Arnoldo Alemán’s Government convicted of corruption, such as Byron Jeréz, former Director General of Revenue. “That room is not even attached to the Model galleries, but is separated from that complex and is no longer used as a cell, but for other purposes,” he maintains.
Monsignor Álvarez, bishop of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Estelí, was persecuted before his arrest. On February 10, 2023, after keeping him under arrest in his home for more than three months, the Ortega and Murillo regime condemned him in an expressly fabricated trial, after the religious man refused to board the plane in which they were exiled. 222 political prisoners.
According to a survey by the CID Gallup firm hired by Confidencial media, 72% of Nicaraguans “disagree” with the sentence because Álvarez “is innocent”; 59% reject the exile of twelve priests to Rome last October.
Based on political affiliation, the Confidencial survey reveals, 42.1% of those who identified themselves as “Sandinistas” said they “disagreed” with the sentence, while 30.4% believed him to be “guilty” and the remaining 27.5% “do not know or do not respond”, according to the study carried out between October 17 and November 15, 2023.
Crusade against the Church
Other religious leaders also categorically reject Monsignor Álvarez’s conviction. “Don’t believe the dictatorship with its cynical language and with photos and videos of dubious authenticity, they will justify his crime and silence us,” wrote the auxiliary bishop of Managua, Monsignor Silvio Baéz, exiled in Miami and denationalized like Álvarez. .
While the Jesuit priest and spokesman for the Society of Jesus for Nicaragua, José María Tojeira, described Ortega and Murillo as “hypocrites.” “The duo persecuting the Church in Nicaragua shows photos of Monsignor Rolando with preferential treatment in prison. Hypocrites, they unjustly sentence him to 26 years and make speeches that they treat him well (…) The misery of dictators is always presenting what is iniquitous as good,” he emphasized.
Despite criticism, the Sandinista administration maintains its crusade against the Catholic Church. On November 29, priest Jairo Antonio Mercado Pavón, who was returning to the country after a pastoral trip to the United States, was denied return to Nicaragua. Until last October, there were 84 exiled and banished priests.
The Police also prohibited in the colonial city of Granada the procession of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, popularly known as La Conchita, whose tradition dates back 300 years. The image will not be able to leave the cathedral. At the same time, in the other colonial city of Nicaragua, León, the parishioners are on tenterhooks since they do not know if they will be able to safely celebrate the novena of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, patron saint of Nicaragua, whose feast day is on December 7 in the popular tradition of shouting.
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