In Nicaragua, arrests of political opponents are commonplace. Not a month has passed since the 2018 protests bloodily repressed by dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo without a new round of arbitrary detentions taking place. Politicians, journalists, NGO activists, priests… They are more than 200 currently languishing in Nicaraguan prisons.
But since mid-September, two prisoners have captured the attention of the French authorities. Jeannine Horvilleur Cuadra, 63, and her daughter Ana Alvarez Horvilleur, 43, were arrested at their home in the middle of the night on September 13 for having “conspired to undermine national authority” and broadcast from “fake news”. If the two women interest Paris so much, it is because they both have French nationality, in addition to that of Nicaragua. They are even the cousins of the rabbi and French writer Delphine Horvilleur, who was moved by their fate on Wednesday on Twitter : “Deep concern for Jeannine and Carolina Horvilleur, my cousins, hostages of the Nicaraguan police state.”
Far from the fanciful reasons invented by the authorities to imprison them, Jeannine and Ana are above all reproached for being, for the first, the wife, for the second, the daughter, of Javier Alvarez Zamora, a 67-year-old economist known for his opposition to the Ortega clan. Alerted by the latter to the ongoing police raid on September 13, Javier Alvarez fled to neighboring Costa Rica, like more than 100,000 Nicaraguans since 2018.
In exile, he appeals from the international community through letters made public on the situation of his wife, his daughter, and Felix, the companion of the latter. “They did not commit the slightest crime or have the slightest political commitmenthe denounced on October 4. They were imprisoned for the sole reason of being my relatives.”
France is following the situation “very closely” their situation
In this letter, he also specifies that Jeannine survived cancer, that she is currently in remission and must carry out regular medical tests and that Ana and her companion both have health problems requiring follow-up and treatment. of drugs. So many pathologies that are not compatible with their conditions of detention in the infamous prison of El Chipote. A torture center during the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s – which Daniel Ortega was fighting at the time – it is now used by the regime to let opponents stagnate and crush. Few are those who come out and fewer still those who leave in good health.
“Jeannine, Ana Carolina and Felix have no lawyers, no right to receive a phone calltells Javier Álvarez at the JDD. They are in solitary confinement. The only thing the family has been allowed to do is drop off cookies, water, juice and underwear each day. Nothing else. They have no right to anything.” Preliminary hearings that will set a trial date are scheduled for Thursday, then October 18 and 21.
In a press point this Thursday, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again claimed to follow “very closely the situation” of these two Franco-Nicaraguan women, assuring that “The French Embassy in Managua is fully mobilized, like our authorities in Paris” : “Through several contacts with the Nicaraguan authorities, we expressed our deep concern and insistently reiterated our request for consular access to our two compatriots. […] In particular, we want to inquire about their conditions of detention and their state of health.” Visit requests have so far gone unanswered.
The hopes of a diplomatic settlement of this affair between the French and Nicaraguan authorities remain, despite everything, very slim. In recent months, the Ortega clan has only hardened its tone against what remained of the opposition and has isolated itself even more than it was on the international scene. At the end of September, the European Union ambassador was declared persona non grata by the Nicaraguan government and ordered to leave the country. At the same time, Managua announced that it was severing diplomatic relations with the Netherlands and refused the arrival of the ambassador designated by the United States.