A trip to Disney at the age of 10, an unverifiable relationship and other unusual accusations against Daniel Ortega’s political prisoners

lesther german is the student who, on May 16, 2018, publicly confronted Daniel Ortega. I was then 20 years old. “We are here to demand that you immediately order an immediate end to the attack. We are persecuted, we are students,” Alemán said, assaulting the word, during the so-called first national dialogue.

During these months, Nicaragua was experiencing a citizens’ rebellion, sparked by the students. Massive marches passed through Managua calling for the resignation of Daniel Ortega, who at his weakest moment called for dialogue with opponents to breathe new life and dismantle the protests with violence, as he did .

The OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) recorded 355 killings during the crackdown on protests that year.

For Lesther Alemán, this short intervention will lead him to be persecuted, to live in hiding, and finally to be arrested and exiled. In the so-called prison The Chipote he would spend 20 months and be interrogated for a year every day in two to three hour sessions. There he learned, he says, “the novel” that Daniel Ortega’s regime had invented about him.

“They talked about how I was responsible for the crimes that had been committed in Nicaragua because my offense against the State of Nicaragua forced Daniel Ortega to carry out the cleaning operation (massacre of protesters) and to ban the marches,” he says, now 25, in the United States, where he was exiled on February 9.

Remember that the interrogations They usually happened at night or early in the morning. “Lesther, let’s go!” they shouted at him from behind the metal door to his cell and opened a window for him to put his hands behind him and handcuff him. He says he invented a game. Each time they took him out of his cell, he fantasized that they were going to release him and take him to the house where his parents and sisters were waiting for him.

“I came out drowsy but anxious to know what they were going to do to me,” he adds. He walked about fifty meters, handcuffed, hands behind his back and looking at the floor, to reach the small rooms where a table with a chair at each end “marked the beginning of absurd questions, desperate comments and sometimes offenses “.

That year, he came to count 28 different faces during interrogations. “Some have hidden their badge so that I cannot see and memorize the number that identifies them. Only two showed up with their first and last names,” he said.

“They first told me that I was a church operator, an operator of bishops. That they groomed me, indoctrinated me, and pushed me to do what I did. That I was a useful fool of a monsignor Silvio Baezwho had been trained by Monsignor Rolando Alvarezand that the church had me there as one of their files,” he says.

It was one of those nights that had the biggest surprise of all. A serious-faced lieutenant told him: “Our investigation service has found a family and emotional affinity that belongs to you in the second degree of consanguinity with the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele”.

“Here, they border on the level of total absurdity. I never knew he shared blood, never met him, never shook his hand and never went to El Salvador to see him. I went to El Salvador for a family affair in 2015,” says the young man.

In the trial that sentenced him to 13 years in prison, the absurdities continued, he says. “Someone who was head of the computer crime department for 10 years shamelessly presented as evidence a page of Facebook where the proof was that my mother’s name and my father’s name were on it. And the judge, without any sanction, said that was sufficient proof”.

He says the police presented him with a file about six centimeters thick with all of his interviews. “There were transcribed all the radio, television, digital and print interviews I had given since April 26, 2018. Among the tests were three retweets. One of them was a retweet from The press (Nicaraguan newspaper) which read: “Follow the OAS session on the Nicaragua case live.” And it was reliable evidence to prove my treason!”

During one of the interrogations, the police presented him with a photo of him, taken from his social networks, when he was 10 years old and went to disney world, Florida, United States. “According to them, it was proof of the start of my recruitment by the CIA (Central American Intelligence). That the United States had a strategy to train me from the age of 10 and then to endorse me with the bishops who were going to take charge of my development at the national level”.

The most repeated questions during interrogations were, he said, “How much money do you have in the bank?” Why did you disrespect the commander? Where did you train? You are a Christian? We have proof of your operations to destabilize the country. Who are your operators?

Other times, the interrogation resulted in compelling conversations. “They told me: you made the mistake of playing politics on the wrong side, it’s kids like you that the Front (Sandinist, Ortega party) needs. Nothing would have happened to you if you were with us. We are merciful and the commander is good, don’t waste yourselves on what will never win”.

And at the end, always the same goodbye: “Go back to your cell and keep thinking about how you’re going to pay for all the evil you’ve done.”

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