The Nicaraguan Army announced this Sunday the arrest of a man accused of planning a weapons theft, but opposition media outlets in exile claimed he is an advisor to President Daniel Ortega who has fallen out of favor. The Nicaraguan Armed Forces stated in a press release that “the citizen Stedman Fagot Müller was detained” on Saturday in the indigenous town of Waspán, located in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua.
An Army “patrol” received information about “plans prepared by the citizen Stedman Fagot Müller for carrying out activities outside the law.” The statement indicated involvement with “drug trafficking and organized crime from Honduras” in a plan to “steal organic weaponry from the institution.”
It added that the plan was to seize weapons from “military posts located along the banks of the Coco River.” The detainee “was handed over to the National Police for the corresponding investigations,” the statement detailed. Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan opposition website 100% Noticias, edited in Costa Rica, stated that Müller is an “indigenous leader and ex-guerrilla” who currently held the position of “Advisor for Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples” in the Sandinista government.
The outlet noted that on Friday, in an interview, Müller “called for urgent measures to expel invading settlers” in the Caribbean region and “blamed local authorities for land trafficking, absolving Daniel Ortega and [the vice president and wife of the president] Rosario Murillo of violence and corruption” in the area.
A note published on August 16 on Nicaragua’s pro-government site, El 19 Digital, highlighted that Müller, along with 16 others, was confirmed in his role as “Presidential Advisor, with the rank of Minister.” The arrest comes almost a month and a half after General Commissioner Marcos Alberto Acuña Avilés, the head of Ortega’s security detail, was dismissed “dishonorably” for “insubordination” and other serious charges.
According to the opposition outlet El Confidencial, also edited in San José, Acuña became the head of the presidential security detail when Ortega, who ruled in the 1980s after the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza, returned to power in 2007 following elections.
