The main opponent in Nicaragua, Cristiana Chamorro, was found guilty Friday of crimes of which the government of Daniel Ortega accused her, and which had prevented her from participating in the presidential election of November where she was favorite.
Ms. Chamorro was notably prosecuted for money laundering and ideological lying.
“They want to smear my name, but they will not succeed, but they will never succeed in smearing the name of my father or my mother, because I am innocent,” the opposition leader said at the end of the trial, according to 100% Noticias, a site critical of the government.
For the prosecution, the alleged acts were allegedly committed through the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH), a center for training and defending freedom of the press that Cristiana Chamorro directed for twenty years. The foundation was used to receive money from abroad intended to destabilize the government of Daniel Ortega and his vice-president and wife Rosario Murillo, according to the prosecution.
During the trial, Ms. Chamorro’s brother, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, and three former FVBCH employees were also found guilty of money laundering and mismanagement.
“They have all been found guilty,” Chamorro’s niece Olama Hurtado told AFP.
The prosecution has requested a sentence of up to 13 years in prison for Ms. Chamorro and the three former employees of the Foundation and the verdict will be announced on March 21.
The trial, which lasted seven days, was held without access for the press or the public, in a police prison in Managua, known as El Chipote.
– “We expect everything” –
“When you take a position that endangers the power of the dictatorship, you expect everything, even the worst,” Ms. Chamorro, 68, told AFP at the end of May. “The people put me at the top of the voting intentions. That’s why the dictator ordered them to accuse me, it’s revenge against the people,” she said.
Cristiana Chamorro, under house arrest since June 2, 2021, was the favorite in the polls against Daniel Ortega for the November presidential election. She is the daughter of former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997), who defeated Mr. Ortega at the polls in 1990.
His father, journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, was shot dead in Managua in January 1978 for opposing the Somoza dictatorship, which ruled Nicaragua for nearly half a century until the triumph of the Front revolution. National Liberation Sandinista (FSLN) in 1979.
Cristiana Chamorro, a journalist by profession, was among seven presidential candidates who were arrested last year, along with 39 other opponents, ahead of the November 7 poll in which Mr Ortega won a fourth consecutive term.
Around 30 have already been convicted, 18 of whom have been sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison. One of them, Hugo Torres, a Sandinista guerrilla hero who turned to opposition to Daniel Ortega, died in hospital custody in February.
Daniel Ortega, a 76-year-old former guerrilla fighter, has been in power since 2007. His fourth term has been questioned by the international community, including the Organization of American States (OAS), the United States and the European Union, in reason that the Nicaraguan elections were not democratic.