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Rights groups accuse President Daniel Ortega of increasing authoritarianism amid waves of arrests before the November election.
Nicaraguan authorities have arrested at least five other opposition leaders after a massive crackdown by President Daniel Ortega’s government ahead of the November elections has rebuked the EU’s top diplomat.
In a statement Tuesday, police said three farmers – Medardo Mairena, Pedro Mena and Freddy Navas, who were scheduled to run for president – were arrested on Monday for killing and kidnapping police and civilians, armed robbery and extortion, among others. other crimes.
Student leaders Lesther Aleman and Max Jerez were also arrested by police on charges of armed robbery, kidnapping, rape and other crimes.
Police said all the crimes took place in a wave anti-government protests in 2018according to rights groups, Nicaraguan security forces suffered heavy reprisals and killed about 230 people.
Arrested leaders with more than two dozen hopes for the presidency, and opposition leaders business figures those arrested in the last month amid ongoing repression by the Ortega government.
The longtime president has justified the arrests by saying that his administration was prosecuting criminals who were staging a coup against him.
Ortega has used “betrayal” laws to arrest almost all possible rivals in the Nov. 7 election. “It simply came to our notice then. Everything we’re doing, we’re doing books, ”he said last month.
But civil society and human rights groups have accused the 75-year-old man – who ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 and returned to power in 2007 after winning bids for two new elections – of growing authoritarianism.
The German, one of the people arrested on Monday, was the leader of the 2018 protests that returned to Nicaragua after being exiled abroad. The relatively new Citizens for Freedom party has not yet chosen a presidential candidate, but the German said last week that he intended to run.
“Ortega’s goal is to eliminate electoral competition not only by catching the sixth presidential candidate, but also to resist citizen resistance. He has arrested more than 20 political, civic, self-proclaimed leaders, students and farmers, ”Nicaraguan journalist Carlos Chamorro said on Twitter.
Chamorro, who fled to neighboring Costa Rica in mid-June, is the brother of the arrested opposition leader Christian Chamorro.
On Tuesday, EU senior diplomat Josep Borrell said more “restrictive” measures were needed against Ortega’s Sandinista government.
“The situation has reached its extreme, where Member States will have to consider more specific actions, and not ‘enough already, Mr Ortega,’ Borrell said at the European Parliament session.
They also have the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS) he condemned the wave of arrests, To stop the Nicaraguan government from threatening opposition figures and demanding that free elections be held.
Argentina and Mexico as well The envoys were sent to Nicaragua as a result of repression in the last month.
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