Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/MANAGUA: A Nicaraguan court on Friday sentenced Catholic Bishop Rolando Alvarez to more than 26 years in prison, a day after the critic and cleric of President Daniel Ortega refused to be expelled to America as part of a prisoner release.
Alvarez, the bishop of the Matagalpa diocese, was found guilty of various offenses, including treason, undermining the country’s integrity, and distributing false information.
It was also disclosed at the court proceeding on Friday that he would pay a fee and lose his Nicaraguan citizenship. The bishop’s punishment, known by the Catholic term monsignor, was accelerated without justification from its original late March date.
Rolando Alvarez was among more than 200 political prisoners unexpectedly released
Alvarez was among the more than 200 political prisoners unexpectedly released by Ortega’s administration on Thursday. Still, Alvarez refused to board the aircraft headed for an airfield near Washington, D.C.
Later on Thursday, Ortega made remarks on television that he mocked the released inmates and claimed they were criminal mercenaries working for foreign governments to undermine national sovereignty. He also claimed Alvarez had been put back in prison.
Ortega’s police arrested Alvarez in August after dislodging him from the church property where he, two seminarians, and four other priests from his diocese had barricaded themselves. A Catholic television channel cameraman was also arrested with them.
Seven were given 10-year prison terms this month for treason and propagating untruths. On Thursday, though, they all boarded the plane for Washington.
When some Catholic leaders worked as mediators with opposition groups after protests erupted in 2018 that claimed almost 300 lives, Ortega accused them of seeking to overthrow him.
Since then, Catholic nuns and missionaries have been expelled, and Catholic radio and television stations have been shut down by the government of the former Marxist renegade from the Cold War.
Pope Francis appealed for an “open and serious” discussion to end the crisis in Nicaragua after Alvarez’s arrest in August. The situation was being followed by him “with worry and pain,” he claimed.
Francis made just those words following the 2018 protests and did not specifically address Alvarez by name.
