General Humberto Ortega, former Minister of Defense and brother and critic of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, died on Monday in a military hospital in Managua due to cardiorespiratory arrest, the Nicaraguan Army reported.
“The patient Humberto Ortega Saavedra, 77 years old, presented cardiorespiratory arrest, and after attending to him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers, he did not recover from this condition, being declared deceased at 02:30 am,” the Army stated in a communiqué.
On Sunday, the Army had reported that General Ortega’s health condition had suffered “a sudden deterioration” in recent hours. On May 21, the Nicaraguan police installed a medical unit in the retired general’s house, a measure interpreted as house arrest by opposition media in exile.
The police custody began after he said in an interview that his brother Daniel, 78, lacked successors and his power would not withstand an eventual death. On May 28, President Ortega said in a public event that his brother had committed an act of “treason to the homeland” in 1992 by decorating a U.S. military officer.
The Ortega brothers were part of the Sandinista guerrilla that fought against the Somoza family dictatorship, which ruled the Central American country with an iron fist for more than four decades (1936-1979).
After the triumph of the revolution in 1979, Humberto Ortega became Army chief until 1995, while his brother took the reins of the government, first as a member of a junta and then individually.
In 1990, Daniel Ortega was defeated in elections, although he regained power in 2007 and has been successively re-elected in elections questioned by the United States and the European Union.
