Nicaraguan dictatorship plans mass confiscations and prosecution abroad

From our Latrine American Triangle of Doom Bureau with some help from our Cubanization of Nicaragua Bureau

Dictator Daniel Ortega has been following the Castro, Inc. playbook a little more intensively lately, accelerating the process of Cubanization of Nicaragua. His latest move is to demand laws that would allow for mass confiscations of private property and the persecution of dissidents outside Nicaragua’s borders.

In other words, Ortega is doing exactly what Castro, Inc. did decades ago and continues to do today. Consider the “list of terrorists” living in the US, published by Castro, Inc. last December, which featured the most prominent exiled critics of the island’s dictatorship?

From Havana Times

A proposal to reform Nicaragua’s Penal Code, sent to the National Assembly by Daniel Ortega, aims to prosecute Nicaraguans and foreigners for alleged crimes committed outside the country. Penalties could range from confiscation of their property to life imprisonment.

With these reforms, the Ortega regime is seeking to impose a form of “transnational repression,” opposition politicians warn. They also highlight the arbitrary application of punishments such as confiscation of property and life imprisonment, which the Constitution authorizes only for cases of extreme seriousness.

The initiative, which aims to amend 27 articles in the Criminal Code, has been submitted to the National Assembly’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee and is expected to be approved on September 3.

Among the changes proposed by Ortega are changes to Article 16 of the Penal Code regarding the “universality principle.” This article establishes that Nicaraguan criminal laws will also apply to Nicaraguans or foreigners who, while outside the national territory, have committed crimes such as money laundering, terrorism and its financing.

In addition, Article 16 covers crimes such as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their financing, organised crime, cybercrime and any crime against public administration.

The punishments for these crimes vary according to the initiative from imprisonment, asset confiscation and fines. In cases of imprisonment for serious crimes, the punishments will increase to life imprisonment.

In his explanation, Ortega argued that the commission of some of these crimes affects not only individual citizens, but also the Nicaraguan community, “when such actions attack the goods and services intended to ensure the tranquility and well-being of the community.”

However, most of these crimes, which the regime wants to punish extraterritorially, have been used in recent years to persecute and prosecute opponents of the Ortega-Murillo regime. They have also been used to strip approximately 5,500 social organizations, associations and foundations of their legal status and confiscate their assets.

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