(News Spanish) — A Nicaraguan opposition leader in exile and a civic group condemned this Friday the arrest of Jaime Iván Montesinos Sauceda, the parish priest of the Juan Pablo Segundo Church in the municipality of Sébaco, in Matagalpa, confirmed this Thursday in a confusing press release published by the Nicaraguan National Police.
“The National Police, at the service of the dictatorship, slander and invent to try to whitewash their misdeeds,” Félix Mariadaga, a former presidential candidate and one of the more than 200 prisoners that Nicaragua expelled last February to the United States, said on Twitter. who also stripped of their nationality.
For its part, the organization Unión Nicaraguan Autoconvocada (UNA) condemned in a statement “These excessive attacks against the Catholic Church, we condemn these slanders and we demand respect for the physical integrity and the immediate release of Father Jaime, as well as that of Monsignor Rolando Álvarez and all political hostages.”
According to the Police, the priest was arrested on Tuesday night on a road in the municipality of San José de los Remates, department of Boaco, when he was on board a truck in the company of “a young woman” and when he was allegedly “in suspicious attitude” and “intoxicated”.
Later, in the statement, the Police said that Montesinos is being investigated for “committing acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the nation”, all based on the controversial Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, which since its implementation has been used to imprison critics of the government of Daniel Ortega, journalists and even opposition presidential candidates.
The Police did not give more details or link the incident in which he was arrested with the investigations that are being carried out against the religious for alleged impairment of national sovereignty. In his statement, he only said that he “carries out the pertinent investigative procedures and that he will refer the person under investigation to the competent authorities for his prosecution.”
News is trying to obtain more details of the incident and the investigations with the Government’s Communication and Citizenship Council, as well as a reaction from the Archdiocese of Managua, which until this Friday had not expressed itself publicly about the case.
The arrest of Montesinos represents the latest episode of actions by the Ortega government against the Catholic Church. Only so far this year have been recorded, among other acts, the closure of the Immaculate Conception Catholic University, of the Archdiocese of Managua, and the sentence to 26 years in prison against Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, for crimes such as harm to the detriment of the State of the Republic and Nicaraguan society and the alleged spread of false news.
The government has also taken a series of measures that the Church has indicated as restricting freedom of worship, including the prohibition of public processions during Holy Week, or the expulsion of nuns to Costa Rica.
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