Nicaragua on Thursday suspended the titles and the practice of law of writer Sergio Ramirez and 24 other people who in February had been declared “traitors to the homeland” and stripped of their nationality.
A total of 15 lawyers are part of a group of 222 opponents that the government of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega decided to release and send to Washington on February 9, while the remaining 10, among them writer Ramírez, are part of 94 people sanctioned a few days later, detailed a resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ).
“Suspend them definitively from the practice of the profession of lawyers and notaries public,” states the CSJ resolution published on its website.
The CSJ added that according to the legislation, “these persons cannot hold the title, nor practice (…) since they lost the right to practice said profession, by virtue of having lost the Nicaraguan nationality”.
On February 9, the Ortega government released and expelled 222 imprisoned opponents to the United States and the justice system stripped them of their nationality and political rights, declared them “traitors to the homeland” and disqualified them from holding public office.
A few days later, the judiciary declared 94 opponents “traitors to the homeland”, among them the writer Ramirez, and also stripped them of their nationality and disqualified them for life from holding public office, and announced the confiscation of their assets.
All those sanctioned had been accused of committing “acts that undermined the independence, sovereignty, self-determination of the people” and inciting violence and terrorism in the framework of protests that in 2018 generated a political and social crisis.
In addition to Ramírez, exiled in Spain and who served as Ortega’s vice president in his first term (1985-1990), the sanction affects former guerrilla Mónica Baltodano, former CSJ magistrate Rafael Solís and human rights activist Vilma Núñez.
