Caribbean & Central America - July 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The recent removals of a supreme electoral court (CSE) alternate magistrate, Julio César Osuna, and Deputy Police Chief Carlos Palacios amid suspected links to organised crime is threatening to undermine Nicaragua’s efforts to trumpet itself as a security haven amongst its neighbours – in particular the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala

Osuna was stripped of his immunity and sacked following a 29 May legislative vote, amid accusations that he supplied members of what is believed to be one of the biggest gangs in Central America, reportedly led by Costa Rica’s Alejandro Jiménez (‘El Palidejo’, see next page), with false Nicaraguan identity cards. Jiménez made the headlines last year for reportedly being behind the murder of Argentine folk legend Facundo Cabral, which took place on 9 July; the target of the attack, however, was reportedly Henry Fariñas, a Nicaraguan promoter and nightclub owner who was travelling in the same car. Fariñas is awaiting trial on various charges, including drug trafficking and organised crime.

Osuno’s departure came less than a month after the 8 May announcement by Nicaragua’s popular head of police, Aminta Granera, regarding Palacios’s retirement. While recognising that he knew Fariñas, Palacios maintained that he had nothing to do with Fariñas’s alleged criminal activities and Granera’s insistence that “there is no reason…to suggest that…Palacios is involved in illicit activities”, failed to provide much reassurance to the public. The alleged corruption in the Nicaraguan judiciary is hardly new but the question marks over Palacios’s ties with Fariñas attracted particular attention given that, along with the armed forces, the police has been one of the strongest (and most trusted) institutions in the country, despite President Daniel Ortega’s recent efforts to strengthen his control over it – most notably with his presidential order extending Granera’s mandate [RC-11-10].

More clouds on the horizon

Granera has continued to trumpet Nicaragua’s apparent success with regard to security – as is often illustrated in its homicide rate of 12 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 compared with 86 homicides per 100,000 in Honduras, 71 per 100,000 in El Salvador and 39 per 100,000 in Guatemala. This has long been attributed in part to its success at preventing international drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) from establishing a hold in the country. While there have been signs in Nicaragua of the presence of DTOs such as Mexico’s Los Zetas and the Sinaloa DTO - and in September 2010, the US State Department added Nicaragua to its annual list of 20 major illicit transit or major illicit drug producing countries - as recently as March, the police spokesperson, Fernando Borge, reiterated that the Zetas had yet to establish a presence. Local security experts such as Roberto Orozco of the Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas (Ieepp) also told reporters that while foreign gang members might enter Nicaragua via its border with Honduras, Nicaragua is used as a temporary hideout rather than an operational base.

Yet, both Granera and Borge have hinted that this situation could change; Borge told the press in April that isolated cases of foreign gang members picked up along the northern border with Honduras represented a “threat”, while back in February, Granera warned that the gangs from the Northern Triangle could move south. In the immediate term, regional disparities have also attracted increasing attention once again raising question marks over the government’s declared achievements. Granera last month acknowledged that the homicide rate in the impoverished indigenous South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raas) is about 42 per 100,000, the highest in the country – an increase likely related to the presence of drug traffickers in the area (see sidebar).

• Drug trafficking in the Raas

On 27 June, 19 suspected drug traffickers were arrested, believed to be part of a 26-strong ring which, according to press reports, used the indigenous community Tasbaponi in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raas) as a base. The arrests followed the announcement in April by Nicaragua’s military of the seizure of more than two tonnes (t) of cocaine following an operation 80 nautical miles south east of Corn Island in the Raas – one of the biggest seizures in the past three years. The interdiction highlights the growing use of the area as a transit zone for drugs from South America to the US. According to the March 2012 US State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Nicaragua seized 8.80t of cocaine in 2011.