On Thursday, May 25, the police at the service of Daniel Ortega confirmed the arrest of priest Jaime Iván Montesinos Sauceda, from the San Juan Pablo II Parish in the municipality of Sébaco, Matagalpa. Through press release 009-2023, the entity’s Public Relations division said that the priest was arrested on the night of Tuesday, May 23 at km 104 of the San José de los Remates – Esquipulas highway, while Montesinos was allegedly “in a suspicious attitude, intoxicated and in the company of a young woman in a Hilux van.”
However, in the same document, the police also say that Father Montesinos, 61, is accused of “committing acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the nation.”
The priest joins the list of Catholic Church officials who have been arrested in the last week, an action classified by different sectors as a new onslaught by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship against the Church.
Martha Patricia Molina, author of the report “Nicaragua: a persecuted church?”, explained to Onda Local that the reasons why the priest was arrested and then the reasons for the investigation presented by the police do not coincide and mean “total arbitrariness”. .
In Molina’s opinion, “when there is no rule of law or institutionality, this type of aggression against Human Rights falls, let us remember that Nicaragua is a criminal State that does not pay attention to what the laws establish.”
Last Monday, May 22, the priests Pastor Eugenio Rodríguez Benavides, from the Divina Providencia Parish in the municipality of Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, and Leonardo Guevara Gutiérrez from the Estelí Cathedral, were also arrested.
Meanwhile, Bishop Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison, served nine months in prison on May 19.
2023-05-26 09:21:18
#Ortega #Police #Jail #Priest #Nicaragua
