“These people have nothing to do with politics. They have nothing to do with peaceful marches. They have to do with serious crimes”
Tortilla con Sal : What has been the role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the context of the failed coup attempt last April?
Dr. Javier Morazán : Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, in accordance with Article 138 of our Political Constitution and Article One of Law 346, the law governing our body, represents society in general and the victims of crime in criminal trials. And these provisions are the legal guide for criminal investigations and carrying out criminal proceedings when the investigations produce enough proof to be able to achieve a conviction in court. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is an institution of service and receives without discrimination or distinction everyone who comes here to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to present accusations.
In that regard the Public Prosecutor’s Office received and attended around 80 mothers of victims resulting from the context of these events, Furthermore we have carried out a series of formal investigations which we are enabled to do by law. The Public Prosecutor’s Office from the start carried out all these events, supported by specialist bodies like forensic medicine and the expert laboratory analysts of the Institute of Crime Studies and Forensic Sciences. We have exhausted all lines of investigation and we work to ensure that all the lines of investigation are exhausted with professionalism and objectivity sticking strictly to legality which are the principles that govern the conduct of the OPP.
Once the Public Prosecutor’s Office has carried out an investigation and managed to clarify the facts via legal guidance and sufficient, concrete investigative action, the Public Prosecutor’s Office proceeds to present a formal indictment against the people responsible for the events. The Public Prosecutor’s Office presents this accusation to the country’s justice system before the competent court in accordance with our laws, with our legislation. Then these accused people are placed at the disposition of the courts. They face a preliminary hearing where in the first place their right to a defense is guaranteed.
The judge guarantees that right t a defense so the accused, the people accused, can either have a defense lawyer of their choice or if they cannot then a defense lawyer can be named by the State. The court also guarantees the remaining rights of the accused. These include, the court hearings and the right of their relatives to be present during the trial. In that preliminary hearing the accused person is told what they are accused of, the crimes imputed to them by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Prosecutor’s Office gives a summary of the evidence it has to prove the indictment.
The judge in that preliminary hearing reviews whether the indictment complies with the elements or requirements established by law as set out in Article 77 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to make the accusation. If they consider the requirements are met, the judge accepts the indictment and sets a date for an initial hearing which is the second hearing contemplated in our criminal procedure. Then that initial hearing has to be held within the ten days following the preliminary hearing or twenty days if the case involves complicated details. Then in that initial hearing the Public Prosecutor’s Office present the evidence for conviction it has collected during he investigation that supports the criminal accusation.
An in that hearing the judge appraises whether or not the evidence for conviction presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office are enough to send the case against the person accused to trial and in that hearing the Public Prosecutor’s Office presents all the evidence for conviction that it has. In all the cases the Public Prosecutor’s Office has investigated and made an accusation, it has presented abundant proof collected during the investigations consisting of witness testimony, expert analytical proof, physical evidence, videos, audio recordings and scientific evidence that support the deeds the Public Prosecutor’s Office has alleged. Every accusation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office is supported by proof because we cannot make an indictment without the evidence to back it up, for every one of the persons accused and for every crime they are accused of. And that is what the judge reviews on behalf of the judicial authorities in the corresponding hearings. They have made their review, considered that the indictment we have presented comply with the legal requirements and are supported by sufficient evidence.
And in some of the cases that have already gone to trial we can see we have obtained excellent results because the proofs made available at the initial hearing and then at trial have been presented and the judge has been convinced that the accusations made by the Public Prosecutor’s Office are based on evidence and so the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been able to justify categorically the guilt of the people accused. And so the judges have evaluated the evidence the Public Prosecutor’s Office has presented and evaluated also the evidence presented by the defense and in the end not only the judge but Nicaraguan society, on seeing some of the hearings televised and their results, Nicaraguan society has accepted with satisfaction the results of the trials.
For example in the case of the journalist Angel Gahona in Bluefields in which the Public Prosecutor’s Office presented a large amount of evidence to the trial judge, Nicaraguan society and above all the people of Bluefields were satisfied on seeing how the Public Prosecutor’s Office clarified that crime during the investigation and the large quantity of scientific evidence, testimony, documents, videos that supported with complete clarity those who were responsible and those responsible were the two people accused by the OPP.
This is why the Public Prosecutor’s Office has a high level of credibility in Nicaraguan society. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has had that high level of credibility since before the events of April 18th. It maintains that credibility and will maintan that credibility because the Public Prosecutor’s Office is committed to acting in accordance with the law with strict respect for the rights and guarantees of the people accused, by making known all the evidence from the investigation to the defense at the appropriate time so the defense can also do their job of countering the prosecution evidence and the Public Prosecutor’s Office has presented its evidence at trail and will continue doing so in accordance with the law, guaranteeing always due criminal process so as to respect the rights of both the victims of crime and of those accused and of everyone involved in the criminal trial process. Because we as the Public Prosecutor’s Office owe it to the victims of crime to represent society in general as well as the victim of the crime based on the principles of legality and objectivity.
TcS : Is it correct to say that all the accused who are being portrayed as political prisoners have been accused of criminal offenses?
Dr. Javier Morazán : In all the cases, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has presented indictments supported by enough evidence to support every one of the charges brought, for every one of the crimes imputed to the person accused. The criminal accusations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office deal with common crimes, with crimes that threaten safety, that menace public order, that threaten physical integrity, crimes against people’s liberty, against public property, that threaten people’s private property. They have to do with crimes that seriously threaten life. In other words, the criminal charges the Public Prosecutor’s Office has brought in this context have to do with crimes like murder, people who have committed murdered via arson, via asphyxiation of other people.
These are serious common crimes. These crimes of murder of victims have been accompanied by torture, by torture with physical bodily harm, psychological harm, people have been kidnapped, people have been burned, people whose houses have also been set on fire, or their businesses have been damaged and set on fire, people who have been victims of robbery with violence, robbery with intimidation. The people accused are charged with obstructing access to basic services like health care, like education which are rights of the population, the right to food. All these rights have been infringed and violated by the people accused of carrying out these criminal activities.
So as one can see, all these deeds for which the Public Prosecutor’s Office is bringing charges have nothing to do with political matters. Because setting out to murder someone has nothing to do with politics. One is dealing with depriving someone of their life. And that is a fundamental human right. And anyone who deprives another person of their life, everyone who kidnaps another person, anyone who causes bodily harm to another person, or who sets out to set a house on fire, the person who sets up obstacles and puts a roadblock on the public highway which impedes someone else from realizing their right to health care, to education and their rights as a whole, that has nothing to do with politics- That is a common crime that clearly and directly affects the rights of another person. The human rights of other people were affected, were seriously violated andthose are the crimes the Public Prosecutor’s Office is indicting for, without distinction of who may have committed them.
What matters is that who carried out that crime and against whom we find sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they committed those crimes has to face justice for them. As the Public Prosecutor’s Office we limit ourselves to that. Here we don’t have political prisoners nor have we accused anyone for their political opinions. One can review all the case files the Public Prosecutor’s Office has presented and in not one of them have we accused anyone for their political opinions, nor for their religious opinion or belief, nor for organizing as part of a political party or not, nor for being in favor of or against some political party. Nor have we accused anyone for being for or against the government. We have accused people who have committed serious crimes and also people who, by means of all these crimes, have induced fear and terror among the population. That is the objective many of the accused pursued.
TcS : How important is the figure of terrorism?
Dr. Javier Morazán : When a person or a group of people organize to install a roadblock that obstructs people’s free transit, or the free exercise of people’s rights, and on top of that it turns into a center of operations to commit crimes, from which they set out to kidnap people or else kidnap and torture people who arrive there, beat them up, rob them and then finish them off by killing them, that…carrying out those kinds of acts intended to cause serious bodily harm, intended to kill other people using weapons and with the purpose of instilling fear in the population, causing terror and intimidation and leaving the population intimidated, that enters into the definition of the crime of terrorism as contemplated n the United Nations Convention against financing terrorist activity.
Countries have been ratifying these Conventions since 2000 or 2001. We ratified it under the government of President Bolaños. Our country Nicaragua ratified under President Bolaños’s government. There is the decree of ratification and precisely those international commitments meant that the International Financial Action Group and specifically the Latin American Financial Action Group evaluated Nicaragua with regard to its legal order and recommended that Nicaragua had to modify its criminal categories so as to make more effective its actions against money laundering, against financing of terrorism, against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
And that is precisely why Nicaragua, so as to comply with those international standards approved a law. This law was approved after all these criminal events. So it is a law that we as prosecutors have not applied nor have we invoked it in relation to events that took place between April 18th and may andJune of this year. Because this has been manipulated. there has been a great deal of manipulation implying that this law was passed with the aim of criminalizing certain actions. However, that is in spite of the fact that this law was being worked on a long time before April 18th precisely as part of a process obliging the Nicaraguan State to work with the International Financial Action Group and precisely as a result of having ratifies the Convention against financing terrorism, Nicaragua was already working on that reform since before April 18th.
And once the events of April took place the process was suspended. Rather it was left to wait for the events to pass and the law was approved after those events. As a result, based on the principle of the non-retroactive nature of criminal law, that law is not applicable to the events of April, May or June, nor any time prior to July 20th. So that is a manipulation by people with an agenda who want to attack the work we are doing as the Public Prosecutor’s Office against people who have committed serious crimes against people and against Nicaraguan society.
it’s important to repeat so everyone knows, because there has been so much manipulation on the issue of criminalization. Some organizations talk about the criminalization of peaceful protest. But it’s important to emphasize categorically that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has not accused anyone for participating in a peaceful march. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has indicted people who have committed common crimes. It has not accused anyone here for politics nor for having a political belief or for their political feelings nor for being for or against the government or for or against a given political party.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has accused people who have committed serious crimes against other people, against the population and Nicaraguan society. The deeds and crimes committed are murder, arson, homicide, serious bodily harm and terrorism. Why? Precisely because they committed all that large number of criminal acts with the purpose of intimidating the population,self-evidently greatly disturbing public order. So then those elements are treated under our criminal norms as crimes and we are obliged as the Public Prosecutor’s Office to bring charges against the people concerned because that is our job.
Our job is to represent the victims of crime and in all the indictments we have made there are victims of crime. There we identify the victims of robbery, the victims of homicide, the victims of murder, the victims of terrorism, the victims of arson, the victims of criminal damage. The victims are there. But a great manipulation has happened and the victims are kept out of sight. But we as the Public Prosecutor’s Office are obliged to see the victims of the crimes committed and represent them in criminal trials and we have received the denunciations of crimes from everyone who has come to us, making no distinction.
Every person who has come here has been attended with no kind of discrimination and we have investigated and we have indicted and we have presented evidence at trial. The Prosecutor General has even invited the human rights organizations to come to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and share their list of victims or any other information they want to present on the events we are investigating or on events they say we should be litigating. They have been invited in writing and none of them, not one of those bodies has come here.
And when the lists these organizations present are reviewed what we can see is a really large number of errors. These are unverified lists. They are lists elaborated in a far from professional way because how is it possible that in a list appear repeated fifteen people. In one place you put one surname and later in the list with another first name and the surnames reversed, but they are the same person, or people who are alive appear there. That is to say hat one can detect an interest on the part of some organizations to inflate an enormous number of deceased, of dead for a certain purpose.
But their interest disappears when they are invited to come and present their denunciations, to present information, to come and reconcile those lists of people, to impart the information they have available. They just don’t share it. They only make it available to news media with the objective of creating an impression that’s not been verified, information that’s not verified. For our part, we limit our work making it subject not just to verification but to rigorous investigation. When we take the decision to accuse someone of having killed another person, we don’t base ourselves solely on that someone tells us it is so, or that the newspaper says so or some organization instead we are obliged to support our accusations with clear evidence, with witnesses, with scientific proof.
TcS : Can you discuss the case of Amaya Coppens Zamora in this context?
Dr. Javier Morazán : We in the Public Prosecutor’s Office brought charges against Amaya Eva Coppens Zamora and six other people for the crime of terrorism, illegal possession and carrying of firearms, simple kidnapping, armed robbery, serious bodily harm and obstruction of access to public services. This accusation presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office is based on witness testimony, expert proof and material evidence that establishes that this person Amaya Eva Coppens Zamora and the other six accused between April 20th and the end of June organized to set up a roadblock at a place known as San Benito on the road leading to Managua, near a gas station. They turned that roadblock into a center of criminal activity where they detained people arriving there, they kidnapped them, they robbed them and also beat them up.
The same thing happened on April 20th in Leon on this occasion when this same group of people under the orders also of this same Amaya Coppens intercepted, detained, beat with stones and steel mortar tubes three police officers from León. Likewise, on May 23rd tow individuals detained a civilian victim, Luis David Arias at a roadblock also in San Benito. They detained the victim, these individuals under orders from Amaya Eva Coppens according to our investigation. These people detained people and took them to Amaya Eva and she was the one who took decisions and she ordered the others to beat him up, to steal his belongings and that was done on her orders. There is the testimony of the victim Luis David Arias.
The same is the testimony of Jose María Vanegas who in the same way was trying to pass through one of the roadblocks directed by Amaya Eva Coppens according to the police investigation and they detained this victim with his motorbike. He tried to escape on his motorbike. They pursued him, caught him and took him to Amaya Eva Coppens at the roadblock. They take him to her and she along with the others took his belongings from him, his mobile phone, his money, a ring and the keys to the motorbike. Then they kept him kidnapped for several hours. Thee beat him up. They blindfolded him. Beat him up and then let him go.
So we can see that these actions by Amaya Eva Coppens based on the investigation set out in the police file and in the prosecution file that we have presented to the judge and to the judicial authorities, all this evidence backs up these events that the victims have come and denounced to us as the prosecutors and which they have also reported to the police that this person organized and set up the roadblock and that at that roadblock asked people for their vehicle documents and also detained people who were traveling near the roadblock, they blindfolded them, they kidnapped them, they beat them and stole from them for the purpose of causing intimidation in the population, causing terror and fear.
Because that is what these kinds of actions provoke. If you live in a city and know there are a series of places like these roadblocks where there are people determined to detain you and block your way, to beat you up, to cause you bodily harm, to rob you and keep you kidnapped and so on, all that obviously causes anguish, it causes fear, it causes intimidation among the population because those people there with weapons. For example, when they detained one of the vicitms, they beat him with metal tubes and even dropped paving blocks on his head and that put the life of the victim in grave danger. All these acts by these people who were committing these kinds of serious crimes there with weapons, in effect they used the weapons at the moment of capturing people so as to provoke fear and terror in the population.
That is why she is also accused of the crime of terrorism. So as you can see with all these elements to secure a conviction that we have, the denunciations of the victims and the evidence that confirms and supports the denunciations of the victims, these are what we presented to the judicial authorities against these people. These people have nothing to do with politics. They have nothing to do with peaceful marches. They have to do with serious crimes, with acts of delinquency, with actions that gravely threaten the public order of Nicaraguan society. And that is why the Public Prosecutor’s Office is on¡bliged to accuse them and present them to the courts and that is what the Public Prosecutor’s Office has done.
* Dr. Javier Morazán is the Director of the Special Unit gainst Organized Crime of Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office
