Managua. The Nicaraguan justice sentenced two business leaders critical of the Daniel Ortega government to nine and 13 years in prison, closing with them the cycle of trials against more than 40 opponents detained in 2021, said a humanitarian source.
“The fourth criminal trial judge, Ángel González, sentenced Michael Healy to 13 years in prison,” former president of the Supreme Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), indicated the independent Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) on Twitter.
He was “falsely accused of undermining national integrity,” added the Cenidh, which documents these processes.
Along with Healy, the former vice president of Cosep, Álvaro Vargas, was also sentenced to nine years in prison for the crime of “conspiring to undermine national integrity,” the entity said. The official authorities do not provide details of the trials
Both former business leaders were arrested in October 2021 and found guilty last month for the crimes charged by the government. The sentence reading took place on Tuesday afternoon.
At the time of their arrest, Healy and Vargas were president and vice president, respectively, of Cosep, a business association that criticized the repression against demonstrations in 2018, which left 355 dead.
The questions caused the rupture of the alliance that the businessmen had until then with the Ortega government on economic issues.