Humberto Belli, former Nicaraguan education minister and brother of acclaimed writer Gioconda Belli, thought he had left oppression behind when he fled his home country in June 2021 after anticipating correctly that the Daniel Ortega regime was about to arrest him.
But even though he now lives 1,000 miles away in Miami, Belli, 77, found that the regime has a long reach: He was among the 94 Nicaraguans, most of them in exile, declared enemies of the state by an Ortega judge and stripped of their citizenship and properties in the Central American nation.
“This is a monumental aberration of justice,” Belli said. “To be sentenced for a crime, first they have to grant you the right to defend yourself. They have to give you a trial and here there wasn’t one. They did not call us to defend ourselves, nor did they provide evidence for our (alleged) offenses. Instead, their judges suddenly announced rulings with very harsh sentences, taking away all of our property and our nationality.”
Signed by Appeals Court Justice Ernesto Rodríguez Mejía, the ruling announced Wednesday declared the 94 political dissidents traitors, including Belli and his sister, Gioconda, as well as fellow Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez.
The list also includes civil rights activist Vilma Núñez, former Sandinista rebel commander Luis Carrión, journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Eddy Acevedo, chief of staff at the Wilson Center in Washington and former senior foreign policy adviser to former Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Claiming to be acting in the name of “social peace” and of Nicaragua’s “independence, sovereignty and right to self-determination,” the ruling declares the accused as fugitives from justice and orders the seizures of all real estate properties and interest in private companies that they might have.
Belli said that he did not have large holdings in Nicaragua, but found the ruling objectionable. “We all have something in Nicaragua. It might not be much, but no matter how little it is, we are being robbed in a totally arbitrary manner.”
A former education minister during the presidency of Violeta Chamorro, Belli said he was forced to leave Nicaragua in 2021, believing then that he was about to become the country’s next political prisoner after the regime declared that the think tank of which he was a member, the Nicaraguan Foundation for economic Social and Economic Development, FUNIDES, was involved in money laundering.
The regime then proceeded to freeze the accounts of all FUNIDES directors, including Belli’s. “After seeing that, I thought that they would come next for me,” he said. “I left Nicaragua clandestinely, and a few days later they went to my house to arrest me.”
The court’s ruling came a week after Ortega unexpectedly freed 222 political prisoners and sent them into exile in the United States, including a number of presidential hopefuls whom he arrested in 2021 so they couldn’t run against him later that year.
Just like the newly sanctioned 94 dissidents, the former political prisoners were stripped of their citizenship and declared enemies of the state. They were flown to Washington on Feb. 9 and received immigration paroles for humanitarian reasons.
Their liberation removed from prison the bulk of Nicaragua’s political prisoners, who had been previously estimated at 245. But activists in Miami said they had little hope the regime is considering ending its extensive record of human rights violations.
If anything, it would encourage the regime to go out and arrest more dissidents who would then become new bargaining chips in talks with Washington, said Muñeca Fuentes, president of the Nicaraguan American Republican Alliance.
“Those 222 they freed are only chips in a revolving door,” she said.
There are signs such a scheme may be in the works. On Tuesday, Nicaraguan agents detained four priests. They were released, but they were told that if they continued to speak out against the imprisonment of Bishop Rolando Alvarez, they would soon join him in prison, Fuentes said.
Alvarez, who faces a 26-year sentence on accusation of treason, was meant to be one of the political prisoners released last week, but he refused to accept an order that would send him into exile.
