Argentine Judge Issues Arrest Warrants for Ortega, Wife

Their regime has intensified its brutal crackdown on the Catholic Church and is accused of murders, torture, forced disappearances and persecution of dissidents.

Guadalupe Catholic Church, Granada, Nicaragua (Photo: Emil Diallo/Unsplash)

By Gary Gately

An Argentine judge has ordered the arrest of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega — whose regime has intensified its brutal crackdown on the Catholic Church and thousands of other nonprofit organizations — for “systematic violation of human rights,” according to a lawyer who sought a warrant against the dictator.

The lawyer, Darío Richarte, said in social media posts that federal Judge Ariel Lijo also ordered the arrest of Ortega’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, and about a dozen others linked to the Sandinista regime. They stand accused of murders, torture, arbitrary imprisonments, forced disappearances and deportations, and persecution of dissidents for religious and political reasons.

Richarte, a human rights lawyer and professor of international criminal law at the University of Buenos Aires, and fellow lawyers affiliated with the university filed the case against the Ortega regime in August 2022.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Richarte wrote: “After almost 2 and a half years of investigation, the Judge has just resolved the summons to give an investigative statement and the arrest warrant with an international arrest warrant for Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo and around one dozen others responsible for serious human rights violations…. A little light in so much darkness! A little justice for so many victims!”

The arrest warrants are based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows prosecution of crimes against humanity outside their country of origin.

Judge Lijo cited a “systematic and widespread plan of violent repression against the civilian population” designed to “dissuade social demonstrations.”

Lijo issued the arrest warrants about six weeks after Ortega and his wife expelled the president of the nation’s Catholic bishops’ conference, Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera of Jinotega, because he accused a local Sandinista mayor of sacrilege for blaring loud music outside San Juan Bautista Cathedral to disrupt a Mass. Government authorities now often intentionally disturb Masses.

The government exiled Herrera to Guatemala, making him the third Catholic bishop expelled by Ortega’s regime this year, leaving in the country only five of the nine bishops who had served there.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (Photo: Office of Daniel Ortega)

In its widening attack on civil society organizations it views as hostile to the government, the authoritarian regime in August revoked the legal status of 1,500 nonprofits, hundreds of them religious, and seized their assets. Ortega’s government accused them of not reporting their finances. It marked the regime’s biggest such government action targeting nonprofits in a single day and brought to about 5,000 the number of nonprofits shuttered by the government since 2018.

Last month, Amnesty International warned that Ortega’s government, which has accused the Catholic Church and the U.S. government of attempting to orchestrate a coup, has “plunged Nicaragua into an unprecedented human rights crisis that has been growing for six years.”

Ana Piquer, Amnesty’s Americas director, said in a statement: “The repression in Nicaragua means that no one is safe. The authorities continue to consolidate a climate of fear in which dissent is punishable by imprisonment, exile or disappearance….

“It is imperative that the international community takes concrete and effective measures and acts in a coordinated manner to put an end to this machinery of repression and guarantee access to justice and reparation for the thousands of victims,” Piquer added.

And in February 2024, a United Nations-appointed group of human rights experts accused the Nicaragua government of committing systematic human rights violations “tantamount to crimes against humanity.” The group reported that the government has engaged in extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and torture against civilians, including students, political opponents and members of the Catholic Church.

The regime has increasingly targeted the Catholic Church, subjecting bishops, priests and nuns to monitoring, persecution, abduction and imprisonment. More than 200 clergy members have been expelled from the country. Catholic radio stations have been shut down. Bank accounts of clergy and Catholic organizations have been frozen. Catholic organizations, including religious orders, have been expelled, and the government has imposed tight restrictions on religious processions and gatherings.

From 2018 until mid-August 2024, the Catholic Church in Nicaragua was the target of 870 attacks and harassment, according to Martha Patricia Molina, an exiled Nicaraguan lawyer who tracks attacks against churches and clergy.

A particularly troubling part of a “constitutional reform” that has been approved by the National Assembly stipulates that religious organizations “must remain free of all foreign control.”

Pope Francis has avoided openly criticizing Ortega since last January, when he denounced the dictator.

At the time, Francis told about 35,000 of the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square: “I am following with deep concern what is happening in Nicaragua, where bishops and priests have been deprived of their freedom. I express to them, their families and the entire Church in the country my closeness in prayer.”

After the government sentenced outspoken Ortega critic Bishop Rolando Álvarez to 26 years in prison in February 2023, Francis told a Spanish news outlet: “It is something out of line with reality. It is as if we were bringing back the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitler dictatorship of 1935. With much respect, I have no choice but to think that the person who leads [Ortega] is unstable.”

Álvarez, who had been detained for more than 500 days, and 18 other clergy members and seminarians were deported to Rome last January.

The Catholic Church had long escaped being targeted by Ortega, 79, who sought during much of his 17-year tenure to purge dissidents in politics, the media, academe, business and culture.

Then, in 2018, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Ortega regime. At least 300 were killed and more than 2,000 injured by police and heavily armed government groups, according to human rights groups.

The dictatorship tossed out presidential term limits, seized control of all branches of the state and imprisoned hundreds of dissidents.

Catholic leaders spoke out against the regime of Ortega, which responded by mounting among the most brutal crackdowns in decades on the Catholic Church in Central America.

Relations between the Vatican and the Ortega regime have deteriorated since, and the Vatican shut down its embassy in the country in March 2023.

It got personal for Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff, when Ortega banned the Jesuits in 2023 and seized all the order’s assets. A week earlier, the Sandinista regime closed the highly regarded, Jesuit-run University of Central America in Managua.

Ortega had helped lead a revolution that toppled a U.S.-backed, right-wing regime in 1979, then lost in 1990 elections but regained the presidency in 2007.

Nicaragua has historically been deeply rooted in Catholicism, which had been the official religion under Spanish rule from the early 1500s through the 1820s. Catholicism remained the dominant religion in Nicaragua through much of the 20th century.

But the nation has grown more religiously diverse, and estimates now suggest about 40%-50% of the population is Catholic and about 40% Evangelical Protestant.