Nicaraguan prosecutors have charged a Catholic bishop with crimes against the state some four months after he was arrested in a raid on his presbytery.
Bishop Rolando José Álvarez of Matagalpa appeared in court to face charges of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and of disseminating false propaganda over the internet.
The Managua Criminal District Court assigned a lawyer to represent the bishop who will be remanded in custody until he stands trial on January 10.
Bishop Álvarez, 56, was stripped of his clerical garb for the hearing, wearing a blue shirt instead of a clerical collar and soutane. Observers remarked that he appeared gaunt.
The bishop has rarely been seen publicly since he was abducted by police who burst into his residence on August 19 and abducted him, ending two weeks of house arrest which began after he protested against the closure of Catholic media outlets.
Three priests, a deacon, a seminarian and a photo-journalist were also arrested with Bishop Álvarez but will stand trial separately.
They are being detained in a prison known locally as El Chipote, which is notorious because of its inhumane conditions.
A statement issued by the court said that Nicaraguan authorities have asked Interpol to arrest Fr Uriel Antonio Vallejos in connection with offences similar to those with which Bishop Álvarez has been charged.
According to Nicaraguan media, about 40 political prisoners have already been convicted of such crimes.
Francisco Díaz, the chief of Nicaragua’s police and a brother-in-law of the country’s Marxist dictator, Daniel Ortega, has accused the bishop of attempting to “organise violent groups” allegedly with “the purpose of destabilising the State of Nicaragua and attacking the constitutional authorities”.
President Ortega has himself accused the Catholic Church of using “its bishops in Nicaragua to carry out a coup against the state”.
Nicaraguan-born human rights defender Bianca Jagger was due to address the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the United States today about the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Ortega regime.
Last month, she released a film in which she implored Pope Francis to speak out about the persecution of the Catholic Church in her native country.
She said that bishops, priests and nuns were being targeted in an “unholy war” by Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosarillo Murillo.
“I would like one more time to make an appeal to His Holiness Pope Francis and ask him why, Your Holiness, you have not spoken about Bishop Álvarez and the priests who are in jail?” she said in the film.
“Why not about the Nicaraguan prisoners who are being tortured? Why not pray for us people of Nicaragua and for the Catholic Church that is victim of the tyrant Daniel Ortega?”
The film was released after Ortega had stepped up his persecution of the Catholic Church by arresting a 64-year-old chronically-ill priest and imprisoning him practically naked.
Police kicked in the doors of a presbytery of a church in Managua, the capital of the central American country, and dragged out Fr Enrique Martínez Gamboa.
As they bundled the priest into a waiting van, he was heard to shout: “They are taking me by force!” and: “Viva el Cristo Rey (long live Christ the King)!”
No warrant was produced and the boot-prints of the police were visible on the broken doors of the property after the raid.
Fr Martínez was the 11th priest to be arrested and taken to jail in just the last six months as President Ortega has intensified his crack down on the Church and independent media as part of his struggle to consolidate his hold on power.
The regime has also prevented two Nicaraguan priests from re-entering the country following a short period abroad.
Fr Guillermo Blandón, parish priest of the Church of Santa Lucía de Boaco, was refused entry at a Miami airport after returning from a trip to Israel.
The regime then denied Fr Deyvis López, parish priest of the St Gregory the Great Church, from returning to Nicaragua following a 15-day visit to the United States.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who co-chairs the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, told RealClearPolitics website that he also believes Pope Francis should denounce the persecution of the Nicaraguan church.
“The attack on faithful churchmen like Bishop Rolando Álvarez by dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo has been sustained and unrelenting,” Smith said.
“We encourage the Holy Father to raise his voice on behalf of Bishop Álvarez and those priests, seminarians, and Catholic laymen who are being detained incommunicado without any due process.”
The U.S. State Department has now added Nicaragua to its blacklist of the worst violators of religious freedom.
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