The French Embassy in Nicaragua has been facing a diplomatic headache since the extrajudicial arrest of two Franco-Nicaraguan women. The wife and daughter of an opponent of President Daniel Ortega – Jeannine Horvilleur, 63, and her daughter, Ana Carolina Alvarez, 43 – were arrested on Tuesday, September 13, at their home in Managua, the capital of this small Central American country caught in a repressive escalation. After political activists, journalists and members of the clergy, the regime of the former Sandinista guerrilla is targeting the relatives of his opponents.
“I have no news of them”, alarmed on the phone, Javier Alvarez Zamora, husband and father of the two women imprisoned in Managua in the prison of El Chipote, sadly famous for its acts of torture. Mr. Alvarez Zamora himself narrowly escaped arrest: “On September 13, around 11 p.m., dozens of police invaded my house. I was out. Not finding me, they arrested them to force me to surrender,” sighs this 67-year-old retired economist. That evening, his son-in-law, Felix Roiz, was also arrested. Mr. Alvarez Zamora managed to escape. Now exiled in Costa Rica, he puts all his hopes in French diplomacy.
Caution reigns at the French Embassy in Managua, which refuses to comment. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contacted by The worldensures for its part “closely follow the situation of our two compatriots” and to have “contacted the Nicaraguan authorities. The embassy is fully mobilized, in conjunction with the consular post in Costa Rica”.
The Nicaraguan authorities have not confirmed these three arrests, which took place without an arrest warrant. “Their only crime is being my family”, deplores Mr. Alvarez Zamora. The opponent claims not to be an active militant within the revolt movement born in April 2018 to demand the departure of Mr. Ortega, in power from 1979 to 1990 and from 2007 to today, and his wife, Rosario Murillo , its vice-president. At the time, the security forces killed more than 350 demonstrators, injured 2,000 and made hundreds of arbitrary arrests, pushing more than 100,000 Nicaraguans into exile, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. man (IACHR).
More than 200 political prisoners
Four and a half years later, the showdown initiated by Mr. Ortega and Mr.me Murillo decapitated the opposition. The presidential couple was re-elected hands down on November 7, 2021, in an uncontested election, after having canceled the legal statutes of the three opposition parties. Since then, extrajudicial arrests have multiplied.
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