Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez Gets One Year Sentence Over 26 Years

Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos, highly critical of President Daniel Ortega’s government, and now freed from prison and exiled to the Vatican, celebrated one year this Saturday after serving 26 years and 4 months in prison and being stripped of his nationality. , after being convicted of crimes amounting to treason.

Bishop Alvarez, who was released from prison and sent to the Vatican where he had been since January 14, was sentenced on February 10, 2023, a day after he refused to board a private plane with 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners, who were to be freed. were executed and deported. United States.

After refusing to board the plane, Ortega announced hours later that Alvarez had been transferred from his residence, where he had been under house arrest since August 2022, to La Modelo prison, a maximum security prison located outside Managua.

The next day, Judge Octavio Rothshuh, president of Chamber One of Managua’s Court of Appeals, read the sentence against Alvarez, 57, who became the first bishop to be arrested, accused, convicted and declared stateless since Nicaragua returned to power in 2007. .

They declared him a “traitor to the country” and stateless.

“The accused Rolando Jose Alvarez Lagos is considered a traitor to the country,” according to the sentence handed down by Managua’s Second Criminal District Court judge, Nidia Camila Tardencilla, although it was read by Judge Rothshuh.

The court convicted the leader of crimes of harming national integrity, spreading false news through information and communication technologies, serious obstruction of functions, disobedience or contempt of authority, all of which harm Nicaraguan society. State of Nicaragua.

In addition, bishops were permanently disqualified from exercising public office in the name or service of the Nicaraguan state, as well as from popularly elected positions. He was also punished with “loss of Nicaraguan nationality”.

“In the same way, the loss of the civil rights of the guilty person is declared, which will be eternal, all this for being the author of the crime of undermining the national integrity to the detriment of the State and the Nicaraguan society” for the judgment.

He will remain in jail till April 13, 2049

The Nicaraguan bishop, who played a key role in the mediation conducted by the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference during the failed dialogue process after mass protests in April 2018, will remain in prison until April 13, 2049, according to the sentence.

The prelate was scheduled to face trial on February 15, 2023, which was brought forward after he refused to board a plane with 222 other prisoners, prompting him to be described by Ortega as “glorious”, “quirky” and “energetic”. .

Alvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Esteli, was taken by the police in the early morning of August 19, 2022, along with four priests, two seminarians and a cameraman from the Provincial Episcopal Palace. 15 limited days.

He was later sent home under “house arrest” after being charged with conspiracy to discredit national integrity and spreading false news.

While he was in prison, he was paraded three times by authorities, the last time on January 2 when the US demanded Ortega’s immediate release, Pope Francis, after praying the first Angelus of the year, expressed his “concern” about him. Detention of Catholic priests in Nicaragua.

He was last seen in the Vatican, in photographs that circulated on social networks, offering mass. efe