The Government of Nicaragua presided over by the Sandinista Daniel Ortega released this Saturday photographs of the Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagoswho was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison for crimes considered “treason”.
Álvarez Lagos, bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the diocese of Estelí, both in northern Nicaragua, was exhibited in a prisoner’s outfit inside the National Penitentiary Systemknown as La Modelo prison, a maximum security prison.
The series of photographs were published through the media related to the Sandinista government, with the headline “Monsignor Rolando Álvarez receives a visit from his brothers».
“Images of the visit and family reunion that Monsignor Rolando Álvarez held with his brothers, Vilma and Manuel Antonio Álvarez Lagos, this afternoon in the Jorge Navarro de Tipitapa National Penitentiary System”read in the publications.
The images were released after different sectors of the Nicaraguan opposition and human rights organizations separately demanded proof of life for the imprisoned Nicaraguan bishop.
deranged and fiery
On February 10, Álvarez Lagos, 56, was sentenced to 26 years and 4 months in prison, stripped of his nationality, and his citizenship rights suspended for life, for crimes considered “treason.”
The sentence against the senior hierarch was handed down one day after he refused to get on a plane that was going to take him, along with 222 other released Nicaraguan political prisoners, to the United Stateswhich provoked the indignation of the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who described him as “superb”, “insane” and “energúmeno”.
“He is deranged, but hey, that must be determined by the judicial authorities and the medical authorities who will also have to attend to him, because now that he arrived at the Modelo (prison), he arrived that he was a madman”launched Ortega on the night of Thursday, February 9 on the national network.
That day, the president announced that the bishop was transferred from his residence, where he had been in house arrest since August 2022 for being under investigation, to the maximum security prison in Nicaragua.
One day after Ortega’s speech, and despite the fact that the trial was scheduled for February 15, a Nicaraguan judge declared the religious a traitor to the country and author of four crimes to the detriment of society and the State of Nicaragua.
Álvarez is the first bishop arrested, accused and convicted since Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, after coordinating a Government Junta from 1979 to 1985, and presided over Nicaragua for the first time from 1985 to 1990.
Suspended relations with the Vatican
Pope Francis described the Ortega Executive in Nicaragua as a “rude dictatorship”one month after the conviction of Bishop Álvarez, according to an interview published on March 10.
«With great respect, I have no choice but to think about an imbalance in the person who leads (Ortega). There we have a bishop in prison, a very serious man, very capable. He wanted to give his testimony and did not accept exile »Francisco asserted to the Argentine portal Infobae from his residence in Santa Marta, in Vatican City, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his papacy.
The Ortega government reported two days after “That between the Vatican State and the Republic of Nicaragua a suspension of diplomatic relations has been proposed”after those statements by Pope Francis.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which worsened after 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, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with her main contenders in prison or in exile. EFE
