Nicaragua: Journalist Miguel Mora arrested for the second time

The journalist Miguel Mora, aspiring of the opposition to the presidency of Nicaragua, was arrested Sunday night, according to the Police, within an investigation into alleged crimes against “independence and sovereignty.”

Meanwhile, the digital television channel 100% Noticias, which Mora directed until 2020, reported that police agents raided the home of the communicator and his wife, the also journalist Verónica Chávez, located in a sector southeast of Managua, the capital.

“The house of Miguel Mora and Verónica Chávez is being searched, there is no communication with anyone. Inside the house is his son Miguelito, a child with a disability,” wrote journalist Gerall Chávez, a friend of the couple, on his Twitter account.

It is the second time that the journalist has been detained by the Police. The first was on December 21, 2018, when government forces raided the television station and arrested Mora and the press officer, Lucía Pineda Ubau. Both spent almost six months in prison, accused of “inciting hatred”.

Mora is the fifth opposition candidate for the presidency arrested in Nicaragua since June 2, when the police arrested journalist Cristiana Chamorro, who remains under house arrest. The other three are the former diplomat Arturo Cruz, the political scientist Félix Maradiaga and the economist Juan Sebastián Chamorro.

As part of the wave of arrests, the police have already detained two businessmen, two former deputy foreign ministers, four opposition activists and two dissident ex-guerrilla commanders from the ruling Sandinista Front.

The arrests occur less than five months before the November 7 presidential election, in which President Daniel Ortega, nearly 76, is seeking his third reelection for a fourth consecutive term.

Miguel Mora had registered as a presidential candidate of the Democratic Renovation Party (PRD), led by the evangelical pastor Saturnino Cerrato, and that the electoral court eliminated from the race last May, by removing his legal personality.

Mora’s arrest was condemned by the opposition Blue and White National Unit (UNAB) and the National Coalition. Both organizations have accused Ortega of trying to eliminate all his rivals in order to be re-elected and govern for five more years.

The government, through the Public Prosecutor’s Office, accuses the detained opponents of committing crimes such as “financing terrorism, foreign interference and treason”, and of having supported a “failed coup” through social protests that erupted in April 2018.

In these protests, the violent action of the police and paramilitaries left 328 dead, 2,000 injured, hundreds of detainees and more than 100,000 emigrants and exiles, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The government recognizes 200 deaths.