Nicaraguan presidential challenger Cristiana Chamorro positioned beneath home arrest
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The arrest got here shortly earlier than a digital press convention scheduled for 12pm native time on Wednesday, her press crew advised CNN. Her brother Carlos Chamorro stated on Twitter that police raided her dwelling in Managua and stayed for greater than 5 hours.
In line with an announcement from Nicaraguan Public Ministry, Chamorro was charged with cash laundering and mismanagement of the Violeta Barrios Basis, a non-profit group she had chaired. She denies the fees.
The Prosecutor’s Workplace stated in an announcement that it has requested precautionary measures be imposed on Chamorro, together with journey restrictions and disqualification from working public workplace.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the arrest, saying that “arbitrarily banning” Chamorro “displays Ortega’s concern of free and truthful elections.”
Chatting with CNNE on Thursday, José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division, expressed deep concern concerning the fees towards Chamorro and referred to as on the worldwide group to do extra.
“Cristiana Chamorro is without doubt one of the candidates who may defeat [Ortega] and for that, they’ve invented this prison course of that has no basis and so they accuse her of fiction equivalent to cash laundering and a sequence of different articles of the prison code,” he stated.
“The reality is that Cristiana Chamorro, like every other citizen in Nicaragua at the moment, is completely defenseless and uncovered to any kind of arbitrariness.”