Nicaraguan judge sentences director of opposition paper to nine years in prison

Reuters
Updated ·2 min read
FILE PHOTO: A street vendor sells La Prensa, a local newspaper showing a blank front page as a sign of protest against Daniel Ortega's government, in Managua

MANAGUA (Reuters) - The director of Nicaragua's La Prensa newspaper was sentenced on Friday to nine years in prison for money laundering, according to his relatives, in the latest sentencing of a government opponent detained at the order of the administration.

The judge who sentenced Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro also ordered that the newspaper's facilities and printing presses remain closed, but did not determine for how long. Holmann Chamorro was arrested in August, when police raided and occupied the newspaper's premises. Since then, the paper has only been published online.

Holmann Chamorro was found guilty of money laundering by a judge last month. The same week, judges found his cousins, ​​former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro and Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, who are also on the board of the opposition newspaper, guilty of money laundering and misuse of funds, respectively.

"I am innocent and strong. This is going to pass very soon," Chamorro said after hearing his sentence, according to La Prensa.

His defense argued that there was no evidence of money laundering.

"It's a political trial, and not a judicial case technically speaking," an attorney for Holmann Chamorro told Reuters.

The office of Nicaragua's attorney general and the judicial authority did not immediately confirm the sentence or respond to a request for comment.

Cristiana Chamorro was ahead of current President Daniel Ortega in the polls when she was arrested in June 2021. She and her brother, former lawmaker Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios, had been outspoken critics of Ortega's administration until their arrests, which the United States and international human rights groups have denounced as politically motivated.

They are among the at least 46 opponents of leftist Ortega, a former guerrilla commander, who were jailed during last year's elections. He was re-elected in an uncontested vote in November of 2021.

(Reporting by Ismael Lopez; Writing by Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Ana Isabel Martinez and Bill Berkrot)