• Nicaragua Daniel Ortega's Revenge: 26 Years in Prison for the Rebel Bishop
  • Rolando Álvarez profile: the 'crucifixion' of the rebellious bishop of Nicaragua

The Government of Nicaragua presided over by Sandinista Daniel Ortega released on Saturday photographs of Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos, who was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison for crimes considered "treason."

Alvarez Lagos, bishop of the diocese of Matagalpa and apostolic administrator of the diocese of Estelí, both in northern Nicaragua, has been displayed in prisoner costume inside the National Penitentiary System, known as La Modelo prison, a maximum-security prison.

The series of photographs has been published through the media related to the Sandinista government, with the headline "Monsignor Rolando Álvarez receives visit from his brothers."

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Rolando Álvarez: the 'crucifixion' of the rebellious bishop of Nicaragua

  • Writing: DANIEL LOZANO

Rolando Álvarez: the 'crucifixion' of the rebellious bishop of Nicaragua

The publications read: "Images of the visit and family reunion that Monsignor Rolando Álvarez held with his brothers, Vilma and Manuel Antonio Álvarez Lagos, this afternoon at the Jorge Navarro National Penitentiary System in Tipitapa."

The images have been released after different sectors of the Nicaraguan opposition and human rights organizations demanded, separately, proof of life of the imprisoned Nicaraguan bishop.

ORTEGA CALLED HIM "DERANGED" AND "ENERGETIC"

On February 10, Álvarez Lagos, 56, was sentenced to 26 years and 4 months in prison, stripped of his nationality, and suspended his citizenship rights for life, for crimes considered "treason."

The sentence against the senior leader was issued a day after he refused to get on a plane that was going to take him, along with 222 other former Nicaraguan political prisoners, to the United States, which provoked the indignation of the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who described him as "arrogant", "deranged" and "energetic".

"He is unhinged, but well, that will have to be determined by the judicial authorities and the medical authorities who will also have to attend to him, because now that he arrived at the Modelo (prison), he arrived that he was an energúmeno," Ortega said on the night of Thursday, February 9 on national television.

That day, the president announced that the bishop was transferred from his residence, where he had been under house arrest since August 2022 for being under investigation, to Nicaragua's maximum security prison.

A day after Ortega's speech, and despite the fact that the trial was scheduled for February 15, a Nicaraguan judge declared the religious traitor to the homeland and author of four crimes to the detriment of society and the State of Nicaragua.

Alvarez is the first bishop arrested, charged and convicted since Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, after coordinating a government junta from 1979 to 1985, and first presided over Nicaragua from 1985 to 1990.

SUSPENDED RELATIONS WITH THE VATICAN

Pope Francis called Ortega's government in Nicaragua a "rude dictatorship," a month after Bishop Alvarez's conviction, according to an interview published March 10.

"With great respect, I have no choice but to think about an imbalance of the person who leads (Ortega). There we have a bishop in prison, a very serious, very capable man. He wanted to give his testimony and did not accept exile," Francis told the Argentine portal Infobae from his residence in Santa Marta, in Vatican City, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his papacy.

The Ortega government reported two days later "that between the Vatican State and the Republic of Nicaragua a suspension of diplomatic relations has been proposed," after those statements by Pope Francis.

Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which was accentuated after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth consecutive and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president, with his main contenders in prison or in exile.

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