Caribbean & Central America - May 2024

The purge of the Nicaraguan judiciary which began in late October 2023 as part of efforts to shore up support for Vice President Rosario Murillo [SSR-24-02] has been ongoing, according to local media outlets such as Confidencial. In early April Confidencial reported moves against the vice president of the 16-member supreme court (CSJ), Marvin Aguilar, who since the purge late last year (which local commentators considered indicative of divisions between factions of the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional [FSLN], loyal to Murillo and to President Daniel Ortega) had taken over as the CSJ’s “acting president”. Along with Aguilar, the president of Managua’s court of appeals, Octavio Rothschuh, and other political allies of Néstor Moncada Lau, a national security advisor to Ortega, are reportedly facing an uncertain future.

Aguilar took over as acting president of the CSJ in November 2023, during the first round of purges related to efforts to cement control by Murillo. The younger of the presidential couple (at 72, Murillo is six years younger than her husband), the first lady is widely tipped to take over from Ortega ahead of the next elections due in 2026, and since 2018 has assumed control of spheres such as the police (PNN). Under the purge of the judiciary in late 2023, which was carried out by retired general commissioner Horacio Rocha, a presidential adviser with ministerial rank, following a restructuring in early 2023, and Fidel Moreno, the FSLN organisational secretary, CSJ president Alba Ramos was removed, along with over 900 staff, including judges, magistrates, and administrative staff.

According to a Confidencial report published at the start of April, however, in February 2024 Aguilar was subjected to police interrogations in the notorious Managua prison, El Chipote, in relation to a corruption investigation. According to Confidencial, while not officially removed from his position, Aguilar is “now in a state of limbo” and “no longer has any decision-making authority” in the CSJ. Confidencial also reports that in March Rothschuh was interrogated in El Chipote and was released but has been stripped of his judicial powers.

Confidencial and other outlets such as Divergentes, which like Confidencial is now operating from exile in Costa Rica, highlight that Aguilar’s dismissal indicates that Moncada Lau’s influence in the country’s judicial system is waning. This at a time when the judiciary itself has been weakened, with legislation passed for example in January removing oversight of all national registry documents from the courts to the attorney general’s office [SSR-24-02]. The recent purges leave at least ten vacancies in the CSJ (not including Aguilar), which are likely to be filled with Murillo allies. With the CSJ now paralysed for over five months, the so-called “Murillo List” of replacement magistrates is expected to be presented for approval in the next few months to the 92-member unicameral legislature which, like all other institutions in the country under the authoritarian government, is controlled by the FSLN.

Aguilar

In 2019 Aguilar took over the crucial post of national political secretary of the FSLN leadership council after former CSJ magistrate Rafael Solís, Ortega’s political operator in the justice system, stepped down in protest at the government repression that began in 2018 in response to social unrest. In 2020 he was designated by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) for “assisting in the Ortega government’s effort to undermine Nicaragua’s democracy”.

Rothschuh

Rothschuh has been a prominent figure in Nicaragua’s judiciary. He announced the decision to release 222 political prisoners and expel them from the country in 2022 [SSR-22-04] as well as sentencing Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, an outspoken critic of the Ortega government, to over 26 years in prison in February 2023 which prompted widespread outrage and precipitated the severing of Nicaragua’s relations with the Vatican. In April 2023 Rothschuh was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) in relation to the Managua appeals court’s decision to deport the 222 dissidents.