Prominent Nicaraguan dissident shot dead in exile in Costa Rica | Crime News

A retired Nicaraguan military officer who later became a critic of President Daniel Ortega was killed during a shooting during his condominium in Costa Rica, where he lives in exile.

The death of Roberto Samcam, 67, increased concerns about the safety of Nicaraguan dissidents, even when they live abroad.

The Costa Rica police confirmed that a suspect has entered the Samcam condominium building in the capital of San Jose around 7:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. GMT) and shot the retirement at least eight times.

The Costa Rica judicial investigation organization identified the murder weapon as a 9 mm pistol. Samcam’s wife Claudia Vargas told the Reuters news agency that the suspect pretends to be a delivery man to access her husband.

The suspect would have shot Samcam, then left without saying a word, escaping on a motorcycle. He remains in freedom.

Samcam entered exile after participating in the 2018 demonstrations, which began as demonstrations against social security reforms and has turned into one of the greatest antigan movements in the history of Nicaragua.

Thousands of people flooded the streets of Nicaragua. Some even called for the resignation of President Ortega.

But while Oorta finally canceled the social security reforms, he also responded to demonstrations with a police repression, and the clashes killed around 355 people, according to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR).

More than 2,000 people were injured and 2,000 others have held what Iachr has described as “arbitrary detention”.

During the months and years which followed the demonstrations, Ortega continued to request a punishment for the demonstrators and the institutions involved in the demonstrations, which he compared to a “coup d’etat”.

Samcam was one of the criticisms denouncing the use by Ortega of military weapons and paramilitary forces to buffer demonstrations. Ortega denied having used either for repression.

In a 2019 interview with the confidential publication, for example, he compared Ortega to Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last member of what is commonly called the dictatorship of the Somoza family, which has governed Nicaragua for almost 43 years.

And in 2022, Samcam published a book which was roughly Ortega: El Calvario de Nicaragua, which is roughly translated by: Ortega: the torment of Nicaragua.

Ortega has long been accused of human rights violations and authoritarian trends. In 2023, for example, he stripped of hundreds of dissidents of their citizenship, leaving them effectively stateless and grasping their property.

He also pushed for constitutional reforms To increase his power and that of his wife, the former vice-president Rosario Murillo. She is now leading with Ortega as a co -president.

The changes also increase the mandate of Ortega in office and grant it the power to coordinate all “legislative, judicial, electoral, control and supervision organizations” – practically putting all government agencies under its authority.

From abroad, Samcam helped make an effort to document some of the alleged abuses of Ortega.

In 2020, he became the expert in the chain of command for the Court of Consciousness, a group created by the ARIAS Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, a non -profit organization founded by a Costaorian President winner of the Nobel Prize, Oscar Arias.

As part of the group, Samcam requested testimonies of torture and violations committed under Ortega, in order to build a legal case against the Nicaraguan President and his officials.

“We document each case so that he can go to a trial, perhaps before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,” said Samcam at the time.

Samcam is not the only Nicaraguan dissident to face an apparent assassination at an exile.

Joao Maldonado, a student leader in the 2018 demonstrations, survived two of these attempts while living in the Costarian capital. The most recent, in January 2024, did it and its seriously injured partner.

Maldonado blamed the National Liberation Front of the Nicaragua Sandinianist – which Ortega leads – for the attack.