Nicaragua on Thursday suspended the degrees and right to practice law of writer and former Vice President Sergio Ramirez and 24 others, all of whom were declared “traitors” in February and stripped of their citizenship.
Fifteen of the lawyers involved were among a group of 222 opponents whom the government of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega released on February 9 and then expelled to the United States, a Supreme Court order said. As “traitors to the fatherland” they were stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.
The ten others, including Mr Ramirez, who has been banned in Spain, are among a group of 94 people who faced sanctions the following week, in mid-February.
“The exercise of the profession of lawyer and notary is definitively suspended for those concerned,” reads the order published on the CSJ’s website.
“These individuals cannot claim any title or exercise (…) since, by losing their Nicaraguan nationality, they have lost the right to practice this profession,” the CSJ adds.
Alongside Mr. Ramirez, who was Vice-President during Mr. Ortega’s first term (1985-1990), former Sandinista guerrilla fighter and opponent Monica Baltodano, former Chief Justice of the CSJ Rafael Solis, and human rights activist Vilma Nuñez are among the sanctions.
According to the Inter-American Commission, so far almost 200 organizations (NGOs, associations, humanitarian organizations) have been disbanded by the Nicaraguan authorities since the 2018 crisis began with the anti-Daniel Ortega government demonstrations that have left at least 355 people dead Human rights. Human Rights (IACHR).
The government accuses the dissolved NGOs of receiving funds from abroad to instigate a coup with US support.
Daniel Ortega, a 76-year-old former Sandinista guerrilla fighter, was elected for the fourth consecutive term in November 2021 in a ballot that left all his potential opponents absent, who were arrested or forced to leave the country.