International
Nicaragua detains business union leaders as crackdown widens
AFP
Nicaragua on Thursday arrested the top two leaders of the country’s business owners’ union, police said, bringing the number of government opponents detained ahead of next month’s election to 39.
Superior Council of Private Enterprise president Michael Healy and vice president Alvaro Vargas are being “investigated for the crime of money and asset laundering,” police said in a statement.
Since early June Nicaragua’s authorities have arrested a host of opposition figures, including seven aspiring presidential hopefuls, as well as journalists and business, social and political leaders.
The detainees face charges of trying to overthrow President Daniel Ortega, treason and threatening Nicaragua’s sovereignty by, among other things, “applauding” sanctions and “inciting foreign interference.”
Healy and Vargas are being investigated “for carrying out acts that threaten independence, sovereignty and self-determination, inciting foreign interference in internal affairs, requesting military interventions (and) planning terrorist acts with financing from foreign powers,” the police said.
A court ordered them to be held in detention for 90 days while the investigation is carried out, the Public Ministry, the country’s equivalent of the prosecutor’s office, said in a statement.
Healy’s predecessor, Jose Aguerri, was arrested in July for conspiracy to undermine sovereignty.
The business union condemned the arrests, which it said “violate the fundamental rights established in Nicaragua’s Constitution” and said such detentions “must cease immediately.”
Critics say the wave of arrests is designed to remove any realistic competition from standing against Ortega, 75, in the November 7 election.
Detainees have been held under a controversial law approved last December that has been widely denounced as a means of freezing out challengers and silencing opponents.
Family members of those held say the detainees are suffering isolation, daily interrogations, threats and hunger.
On Tuesday, the influential National Coalition of political and social groups called for an election boycott.
The Washington-based Organization of American States on Wednesday demanded the “immediate release” of all opposition figures in Nicaragua.
Ortega, a former left-wing guerrilla leader, has been in power since 2007 and is seeking a fourth consecutive term.
In 2014, during his second term, the National Assembly, dominated by his Sandinista National Liberation Front party, approved a constitutional amendment to remove term limits, paving the way for Ortega to remain in power indefinitely.
Healy was arrested shortly after leaving the offices of the Public Ministry, where he had been summoned for an “interview” that did not take place and which had been rescheduled, he told reporters waiting outside the building.
When he got into his vehicle, he was followed by armed policemen on two motorcycles.
Sociologist Oscar Rene Vargas said the government is not leaving “any opportunity for a negotiated solution” to the crisis in the country.
International
Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.
“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.
“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.
Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
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