QCOSTARICA — “Costa Rica cannot be complicit with Ortega and Murillo in their violations of the human rights of its people,” writes the former president of Costa Rica, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998-2002), in an opinion piece published, in Spanish, in Diario Extra.
On February 16, Douglas Gamaliel Álvarez Morales was extradited to Nicaragua. An extradition request for similar conditions is being processed for Reinaldo Picado Miranda. An arrest warrant has also been requested by a recognized Nicaraguan judicial authority that collaborates with the dictatorship against Gabriel Leónidas Putoy Cano and there is an international arrest warrant from Interpol against him.
These processes should concern all human rights lovers to prevent Costa Rica from contributing to the violation of the fundamental freedoms of Nicaraguan citizens.
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These three Nicaraguans have been public opponents of the dictatorial regime of Nicaragua.
The first two are peasant leaders who have confronted the Ortega and Murillo regime and were forced to leave their homeland after the violent repressions of the Nicaraguan Government against the demonstrations in April 2018, resulting in 355 deaths. They requested refugee status which was denied in 2019. Mathematics teacher Putoy Cano was a political prisoner of the dictatorship for almost a year and obtained his refugee status in our country in April 2023.
Against the first two, the Costa Rican Police received an extradition request from the Nicaraguan Police and they were arrested with that simple request on October 18, 2023.
His lawyer filed a request for political asylum that paralyzed a simple police surrender. Unfortunately, that request was quickly denied, and the process was then followed through judicial means.
Three concerns about extraditions to Nicaragua
From these very worrying events, I draw three consequences with their respective request.
The first concern and request, and the most urgent conclusion from these facts, is the need to ensure that a dictatorship like that of our neighbors is never allowed to arrest, much less handover, a person based on a simple police request. My request is for the Government to give a clear instruction to all police forces that this would be a serious violation of human rights that cannot occur in Costa Rica.
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The second is regarding the care that must be taken when faced with an Interpol request.
From the Interpol website, we find that the red notices of people whose arrest is requested are not sought by Interpol. They are sought by the requesting governments.
Of a total of 6,811 people in Interpol’s red notices, 69 are from Nicaragua. This is 1.01% of the total. Compare that figure with the Nicaraguan population compared to the world, which is only 0.09%. Nicaragua’s demand for Interpol arrests is more than eleven times its proportion of the world’s population!
And it’s not that Nicaragua has a high common crime rate. Intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Nicaragua are by far lower than in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
Furthermore, Article 3 of the Interpol Constitution says: “The Organization is strictly prohibited from any activity or intervention in questions or matters of a political, military, religious or racial nature” and Interpol even has a Directory of Article 3 Procedures that specifically states that the objective of that article is “to protect people against possible persecution.”
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Obviously, this is not happening in relation to Nicaragua’s requests.
This warrants action by the Government of Costa Rica before Interpol to request that this circumstance be corrected, and requires us to be especially strict regarding the demands that Interpol makes at the request of Nicaragua for the extradition of its nationals.
The third is regarding procedures in the Judicial Branch. Our Constitution establishes in Article 31 that “Costa Rica will be an asylum for every politically persecuted person… they can never be sent to the country where they are persecuted. Extradition… will never proceed in cases of political crimes or crimes related to them, according to the Costa Rican classification.”
Petition to the Supreme Court of Justice of Costa Rica
My request to the Supreme Court of Justice is that the radical application of this article be instructed in the event of requests from the Ortega/Murillo government.
The regime’s actions in violation of human rights are evident, public, and notorious, and have been confirmed in multiple declarations of the OAS and the United Nations.
As recently as on February 29 of this year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights indicated: “The Government of Nicaragua continues to perpetrate serious systematic violations of human rights, equivalent to crimes against humanity, for political reasons, declares the Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua. The situation has worsened in 2023.”
Specifically, the president of that organization’s Commission on Nicaragua stated: “Nicaragua is trapped in a spiral of violence marked by the persecution of all forms of political opposition, real or perceived, both inside and outside.”
Costa Rica cannot be complicit with Ortega and Murillo in their violations of the human rights of its people.
This article was originally published in Spanish in Diario Extra and translated and adapted by The Q.
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