A retired Nicaraguan navy officer who later grew to become a critic of President Daniel Ortega has been killed in a taking pictures at his condominium in Costa Rica, the place he lives in exile.
The demise of Roberto Samcam, 67, on Thursday has heightened concern in regards to the security of Nicaraguan dissidents, even once they dwell overseas.
Police in Costa Rica have confirmed {that a} suspect entered Samcam’s condominium constructing within the capital of San Jose at roughly 7:30am native time (13:30 GMT) and shot the retired main a minimum of eight occasions.
Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Organisation recognized the homicide weapon as a 9mm pistol. Samcam’s spouse, Claudia Vargas, informed the Reuters information company that the suspect pretended to be a supply driver to achieve entry to her husband.
The suspect allegedly fired on Samcam after which left with out saying a phrase, escaping on a motorbike. He stays at massive.
Samcam went into exile after taking part within the 2018 protests, which started as demonstrations in opposition to social safety reforms and escalated into one of many largest antigovernment actions in Nicaragua’s historical past.
1000’s of individuals flooded Nicaragua’s streets. Some even known as for President Ortega’s resignation.
However whereas Ortega did in the end cancel the social safety reforms, he additionally answered the protests with a police crackdown, and the clashes killed an estimated 355 folks, in line with the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights (IACHR).
Greater than 2,000 folks had been injured, and one other 2,000 held in what the IACHR described as “arbitrary detention”.
Within the months and years after the protests, Ortega has continued to hunt punishment for the protesters and establishments concerned within the demonstrations, which he likened to a “coup”.
Samcam was among the many critics denouncing Ortega’s use of navy weapons and paramilitary forces to tamp down on the protests. Ortega has denied utilizing both for repression.
In a 2019 interview with the publication Confidencial, for example, he in contrast Ortega to Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the final member of what’s generally referred to as the Somoza household dictatorship, which dominated Nicaragua for practically 43 years.
And in 2022, Samcam revealed a ebook that roughly known as Ortega: El Calvario de Nicaragua, which roughly interprets to: Ortega: Nicaragua’s torment.
Ortega has lengthy been accused of human rights abuses and authoritarian tendencies. In 2023, for example, he stripped hundreds of dissidents of their citizenship, leaving them successfully stateless, and seized their property.
He has additionally pushed for constitutional reforms to extend his energy and that of his spouse, former Vice President Rosario Murillo. She now leads with Ortega as his co-president.
The modifications additionally enhance Ortega’s time period in workplace and grant him the ability to coordinate all “legislative, judicial, electoral, management and supervisory our bodies” — placing just about all authorities companies underneath his authority.
From overseas, Samcam was serving to to steer an effort to doc a few of Ortega’s alleged abuses.
In 2020, he grew to become the chain-of-command skilled for the Court docket of Conscience, a gaggle created by the Arias Basis for Peace and Human Progress, a nonprofit based by a Nobel Prize-winning Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias.
As a part of the group, Samcam solicited testimony of torture and abuses dedicated underneath Ortega, with the goal of constructing a authorized case in opposition to the Nicaraguan president and his officers.
“We’re documenting every case in order that it could transfer on to a trial, presumably earlier than the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights,” Samcam mentioned on the time.
Samcam just isn’t the one Nicaraguan dissident to face an obvious assassination try whereas in exile.
Joao Maldonado, a pupil chief within the 2018 protests, has survived two such makes an attempt whereas dwelling within the Costa Rican capital. The latest one, in January 2024, left him and his associate severely injured.
Maldonado has blame Nicaragua’s Sandinista Nationwide Liberation Entrance — which Ortega leads — for the assault.
