Ortega’s Police Recapture Journalist Miguel Mora

Under the orders of dictator Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan Police recaptured this Sunday night journalist Miguel Mora and ransacked his home. He became the fifth presidential candidate jailed since the beginning of June, when the regime began a new wave of repression against opponents, five months before the presidential elections in November.

Like nearly all the recent detentions, the official statement informing of his arrest, states that Mora is under “investigation” for the alleged violation of the “Law in Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-determination for Peace”. The same catch-all accusation has been applied to “criminalize” opponents. So far, there have been 18 new detainees, including political leaders, ex-Sandinista guerrillas and business leaders.

Another 120+ political prisoners were already in Ortega’s prisons on different fabricated charges.

Miguel Mora was jailed for the first time in 2018, accused of inciting hatred for denouncing the government repression of protestors. The facilities of the 100% Noticias channel, which he owns, were confiscated in a nighttime raid and his case became one of the most symbolic of disrespect for press freedom in Nicaragua.

The first arrest occurred on Friday, December 21, 2018, when riot police took him away along with journalist, Lucía Pineda Ubau. Both were then isolated in maximum security cells under degrading conditions for over six months.

Precisely, Pineda, from Costa Rica, confirmed last night’s raid and the arrest of Mora. In all the cases of the prisoners during the last three weeks, the police have stolen whatever they pleased from their homes and terrorized any family members present.

The regime released Miguel Mora and Lucia Pineda on June 11, 2019, along with more than thirty political prisoners, as part of a so-called Amnesty Law, questioned by human rights organizations for providing impunity to Ortega’s police and paramilitary forces for their deadly repression of anti-government protests, including at least 328 documented assassinations.

Journalist Mora aspired to a presidential candidacy through the Democratic Restoration Party, which Ortega’s Electoral Council summarily stripped of its legal status last month. Before Mora was arrested and his house raided this Sunday, the regime detained four other presidential candidates: Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastian Chamorro. The abductions continued with activist opposition leaders, ex-Sandinista guerrillas and business executives.

The families of the detainees have recently denounced the serious human rights violations to which they have been subjected. The first captured were Walter Gómez and Marcos Fletes, former workers of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, who have been locked up in the infamous El Chipote interrogation jail for 22 days.

The former president of the Foundation and presidential candidate, Cristiana Chamorro, followed those who are being investigated for the alleged crime of money laundering.

Late Sunday, former Costa Rican president, Laura Chinchilla, denounced the arrest of Miguel Mora and the persecution of the Ortega regime, which, “shielded by the shadows assault privacy and detain a journalist and another political leader.”

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by Havana Times