The revenge of Daniel Ortega: 26 years in prison for the rebel bishop

• Nicaragua Daniel Ortega punishes Bishop Álvarez with a cell full of prisoners after refusing to be exiled to the US

• Nationality Ortega's exiles receive the Spanish offer with joy

The punishment against Monsignor

the rebel bishop of

has come expressly and with an early sentence:

and withdrawal of nationality for "traitor to the homeland."

That is the price in

for those who dare to oppose

as the leader himself acknowledged in his message to the country on Thursday night.

"In the same way, the loss of the condemned citizen's rights is declared, on a perpetual basis," says the sentence against the bishop, imprisoned since Thursday in the Modelo prison.

The initial charge against Álvarez was conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news.

A single day has taken the dictatorship

to condemn the man who refused to get on the plane that transferred the 222 exiles to Washington.

The penultimate act of courage from the most critical ecclesiastical voice since the start of the civil rebellion in 2018 in Nicaragua.

His homilies were awaited with devotion, knowing that not a single complaint against the impunity of power would be spared.

Since Thursday he has been confined, for revenge, in the Modelo prison.

Álvarez is so annoying to the Sandinista regime that Ortega used a good part of his message to the country on Thursday to try to discredit him

The caudillo even showed his surprise and indignation that the bishop did not comply with his orders to the letter, which exacerbated him live and led him to publicly denounce sexual abuse in the Church and the insults and attacks against Pope Francis, with whom in

day He agreed to the exile of the

"The one who did not want to get on the plane was the character Álvarez. He was lining up and when he got to the stairs he began to say that he was not leaving, that he would first have to talk to the bishops. An absurd thing, the decision was of the State, he could not question it", Ortega dramatized during his speech, in which he even blamed the bishop for lacking the "courage of Christ, who endured the crucifixion".

Bishop Rolando Álvarez, after spending four months missing, at the end of last year. WORLD

A rebel since he was young, this is what this 56-year-old Catholic priest is like, who once decided to take refuge in

to escape the compulsory military service imposed by the Sandinistas.

During the negotiations between the opposition and the government in 2018, Álvarez and other prelates acted as mediators between both parties, but his speech demanding democracy made him one of the people most hated by the

"Evil is defeated only by force of good. There is no other way. Good belongs to the strong."

Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, the rebel bishop of Matagalpa, likes to give his thoughts to his parishioners, even when the dictatorship has further tightened the screws of repression.

When the dictatorship began this week's operation, the Bishop of Matagalpa remained under house arrest.

Last year he suffered an illegal arrest for four months, during which he was kept kidnapped in a clandestine house, swallowed by the jaws of tyranny.

The disappearance of the rebellious bishop ended in December, when he was forced to appear in a courtroom before an invisible judge.

His captors released two images of the priest, emaciated, without his cassock, the same one with which,

As if they were humiliating him in this way, with the same script and with the same accusations against the 40 political leaders, including the seven presidential candidates, arrested in 2021.

Clerics have suffered severe harassment and attacks, both from agents and mobs of the regime.

Even the venerated image of the Blood of Christ suffered burns after throwing a

"Irrational and unbridled hatred of the Nicaraguan dictatorship against Monsignor Rolando Álvarez. They are vengeful against him. They have not resisted his moral height and his prophetic coherence. Rolando will be free, God will not abandon him. They sink every day in their fear and in his wickedness", reacted Archbishop Báez from his exile in the US.

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