President Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on a trio of Nicaraguan officials implicated in human rights abuses in the turbulent Central American country, U.S. officials announced Thursday.
“Today’s sanctions announcement, plus earlier and continuing visa revocations, shows the United States will expose and hold accountable those responsible for the Nicaraguan government’s ongoing violence and intimidation campaign against its people,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a press bulletin. “These actions must end.”
The Treasury Department targeted three senior Nicaraguan officials, including the head of Nicaragua’s National Police, in an attempt to discourage the government’s violent crackdown on political dissidents. Commissoner Francisco Javier Diaz Madriz’s designation followed on the heels of “extrajudicial killings” by his team. Those abuses include an incident in which “Nicaraguan police reportedly set fire to a family home in Managua, killing six, including two young children,” according to the Treasury Department.
“The violence perpetrated by the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega against the Nicaraguan people and the efforts of those close to the Ortega regime to illicitly enrich themselves is deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable,” Sigal Mandelker, under secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said while unveiling the sanctions.
The U.S. estimates that about 220 protesters have been killed by pro-Ortega forces, while another 1,500 people have been injured. The protests have been underway for months, sparked by opposition to unilateral pension cuts unveiled by Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who was elected vice president in 2016.
“President Ortega and his inner circle continue to violate basic freedoms of innocent civilians while ignoring the Nicaraguan people’s calls for the democratic reforms they demand, including free, fair, and transparent elections,” Mandelker said. “These sanctions are part of our ongoing campaign under the Global Magnitsky program to hold individuals who engage in human rights abuses and corruption to account.”
Treasury sanctioned two other individuals on Thursday, in addition to Diaz. The pair, Fidel Antonio Moreno Briones and Jose Franciso Lopez Centeno, appear to have indirect ties to the arson attack in Managua. Moreno is a liaison between local government and Ortega’s ruling political party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
“The Sandinista Youth has been implicated in numerous serious human rights abuses related to the ongoing protests against the Nicaraguan government, including in the beating of protesters in April 2018 and allegedly participating in the June attack that killed a family of six in Managua,” Treasury noted.
Lopez is president of a Nicaraguan state-owned oil company and vice president of another company, Albanisa, that imports Venezuelan energy products, making him a point of contact between two of the most intense political crises in Latin America. “Senior officials within the Nicaraguan government and the [Sandinista Party] have used ALBANISA funds to purchase television and radio stations, hotels, cattle ranches, electricity generation plants, and pharmaceutical laboratories,” according to the Treasury Department.
The sanctions freeze any assets that the three officials are holding in the American financial system banks, but U.S. officials declined to say how much that might cover. They suggested that the punishment might encourage Ortega’s team to participate in a peace process brokered by the Roman Catholic Church in the country.
“We support the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua’s efforts to advance negotiations to resolve the crisis and urge full implementation of the June 15 National Dialogue agreement on human rights as a critical component,” Nauert said. “The United States also supports calls for early, free, fair, and transparent elections. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and take additional actions as events warrant.”
