Michael Healy, Nicaragua’s Top Business Leader, Arrested Two Weeks Before Elections

The businessman Michael Healy, president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), the main management leadership of Nicaragua, was arrested this Thursday by the National Police after leaving the Public Ministry, denounced the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, to which he belongs.

The arrest of Healy, a critic of the government presided over by the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, comes a day after the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) demanded the “immediate” release of aspiring presidential candidates and political prisoners in Nicaragua, with 17 days left for the elections in which the president will seek a new re-election.

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The holder of the Cosep He told reporters, after leaving the Public Ministry, where he remained for 10 minutes, that they rescheduled the appointment and did not give him further explanations about the case under investigation.

Later he boarded his vehicle and when he was going to his residence, he was intercepted by the National Police, according to the complaint from the Civic Alliance, which expressed its solidarity with the business leader.

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“He was detained by the police of the regime. We demand that his physical integrity be respected and we demand his immediate release. We reject the persecution and harassment of the regime against Michael Healy Lacayo “, said that alliance, which was the Executive’s counterpart at a negotiation table with which a peaceful solution to the crisis that the country has been experiencing since April 2018 was sought.

THERE ARE 38 ARRESTED BEFORE THE COMMITMENTS

“The town of Nicaragua continues to suffer the attack on the institutionality and the rule of law, created to restrict freedom of thought, right of association and participation of organized society, rights violated in our Political Constitution “, denounced that group.

At the moment, the National Police has not explained the reasons for the arrest of the union leader.

Healy, 59, who was president of the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic) and to whom 210 hectares of a farm dedicated to the cultivation of sugar cane and banana are confiscated by government supporters after the anti-government demonstrations of April 2018, was summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office along with the rancher Álvaro Vargas, vice president of the Cosep, which will have to come later.

Healy was elected president of the Cosep in September 2020 for a period of three years, which will conclude in September 2023, replacing the businessman José Adán Aguerri, who was arrested last June and is accused of alleged “treason.”

The arrest of Healy It is the 38th that the National Police has carried out since May 28 against independent professionals and dissidents, including seven who announced their intentions to run for the Nicaraguan Presidency by the opposition.

Nicaragua He lives convulsive weeks after the arrests and accusations of at least 38 opposition leaders and independent professionals, prior to the general elections on November 7, in which President Ortega seeks re-election for five more years.

Ortega, a former Sandinista guerrilla who is about to turn 76 years old and who returned to power in 2007 after coordinating a Government Junta from 1979 to 1984 and presiding over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990, is seeking his fifth term, fourth in a row, and second with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

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Deshawn