2023-06-10 03:11:20
Nicaraguan journalist Víctor Ticay, a collaborator with local television Channel 10 and arrested during Holy Week following covering a religious procession, was found guilty this Friday of the crimes of “propagation of false news” and undermining national integrity, considered ” treason once morest the country.”
The communicator, director of the Facebook page “La Portada”, was sentenced in the early hours of the morning, without the right to defense, and then transferred to the National Penitentiary System, known as La Modelo, a maximum security prison, he told reporters the lawyer Braulio Abarca, defender of the Human Rights Collective organization Nicaragua Nunca Más.
The journalist was taken to the Managua courts early this Friday, where a judge read his guilty sentence, he said.
The communicator’s guilty plea is part of “an arbitrary process without judicial guarantees,” denounced the lawyer, who criticized that he was sentenced “in the early morning hours and without the right to defense.”
In addition, “even the minimum guarantees of due process were not respected, the established process of both the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Criminal Code has not been respected,” Abarca argued.
Ticay was detained last Holy Thursday by police officers from the municipality of Nandaime, 56 kilometers southwest of Managua, one day following broadcasting on his Facebook page “a religious activity that the Police wanted to ban” in that city, and that following his detention was deleted from the Facebook page.
His arrest, like that of dozens of opponents and activists, took place prior to the fifth anniversary of the demonstrations once morest the government of Daniel Ortega.
In April 2018, thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest controversial social security reforms, which later turned into a demand for Ortega’s resignation following responding with force.
The protests left at least 355 dead according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), although Nicaraguan organizations raise the figure to 684 and Ortega acknowledges that there were “more than 300” and maintains that it was an attempted coup.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which has worsened following the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second along with his wife Murillo as vice president. , with its main contenders in prison.
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