Tortilla con Sal, September 26th 2018
Extended interview with Dr. Javier Morazán *, of Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office.
This is an extended version of the interview with Dr. Javier Morazán of last September 19th based on exchanges via e-mail above all to clarify the importance and significance of the figure of terrorism in relation to the crimes committed during the failed coup attempt between April 18th and early July this year.
Tortilla con Sal : What has been the role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the context of the failed coup attempt last April?
Dr. Javier Morazán : Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, in accordance with Article 138, part 9 paragraph b) of our Political Constitution and Article One of Law 346, the law governing our body, represents society in general and the victims of crime in criminal trials. The Public Prosecutor's Office also gives legal guidance to criminal investigations and carries out criminal proceedings when the investigations produce enough proof to be able to achieve a conviction in court. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is an institution of service and receives without discrimination or distinction everyone who comes here to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to present accusations or seek other help .
In that regard the Public Prosecutor’s Office received and attended around 80 mothers of victims who died resulting from the context of these events, Furthermore we have carried out a series of formal investigations which we are enabled to do by law. The Public Prosecutor's Office from the start carried out all these events, supported by specialist bodies like forensic medicine and the expert laboratory analysts of the Institute of Crime Studies and Forensic Sciences. We are working to exhaust all lines of investigation and we work to ensure that all the lines of investigation are exhausted with professionalism and objectivity sticking strictly to legality which are the principles that govern the conduct of the OPP.
Once the Public Prosecutor's Office has carried out an investigation and managed to clarify the facts via legal guidance and sufficient, concrete investigative action, the Public Prosecutor's Office proceeds to present a formal indictment against the people responsible for the events. The accused people are presented to the country’s judicial authorities, they hold a preliminary hearing in which, in the first place, the right to defense is guaranteed. The people accused can either have a defense lawyer of their choice or if they cannot then a defense lawyer can be named by the State. The court also guarantees the remaining rights of the accused. These include, the court hearings and the right of their relatives to be present during the trial. In that preliminary hearing the accused person is told what they are accused of, the crimes imputed to them by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office gives a summary of the evidence it has to prove the indictment.
The judge in that preliminary hearing reviews whether the indictment complies with the elements or requirements established by law as set out in Article 77 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to make the accusation. If they consider the requirements are met, the judge accepts the indictment and sets a date for an initial hearing which is the second hearing contemplated in our criminal procedure. Then that initial hearing has to be held within the ten days following the preliminary hearing or twenty days if the case involves complicated details. Then in that initial hearing the Public Prosecutor's Office present the evidence for conviction it has collected during the investigation that supports the criminal accusation.
An in that hearing the judge appraises whether or not the evidence for conviction presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office are enough to send the case against the person accused to trial . In all the cases the Public Prosecutor's Office has investigated and made an accusation, it has presented abundant proof collected during the investigations consisting of witness testimony, expert analytical proof, physical evidence, documentary evidence, videos, audio recordings and scientific evidence that support the deeds the Public Prosecutor's Office has alleged. That is why these indictments have been accepted and sent to trial.
Every accusation by the Public Prosecutor's Office is supported by proof because we cannot make an indictment without the evidence to back it up, for every one of the persons accused and for every crime they are accused of. And that is why the judges have made their review and confirmed the indictments and even the defense lawyers have accepted there is evidence to support the accusations.
The cases that have already gone to trial have obtained excellent results because the proofs made available at the initial hearing and then at trial have been presented have been able to demonstrate convincingly the guilt of the people accused. And so the judges have evaluated the evidence the Public Prosecutor's Office has presented and evaluated also the evidence presented by the defense and the the judge has taken these into account.
The victims and the population in general that have seen the court hearings on the television news hav accepted with satisfaction the work of the Public Prosecutor's Office and results of the trials. Any impartial observer can warrant that. The only people who do not are people paid to ignore the evidence since their business and way of making a living depends on criticizing the actions of the State.
For example in the case of the journalist Angel Gahona in Bluefields the expectations of Nicaraguan society and above all the people of Bluefields were satisfied on seeing how the Public Prosecutor's Office clarified and established the facts of that crime during the investigation with a large quantity of scientific evidence, testimony, documents, videos and physical evidence that supported with complete clarity that those who were responsible were the two people accused by the Public Prosecutor's Office
This is why the Public Prosecutor's Office has a high level of credibility in Nicaraguan society. The Public Prosecutor's Office has had that high level of satisfaction on the part of the population since before the events of April 18th. It maintains that credibility and will maintan that credibility because the Public Prosecutor's Office is committed to acting in accordance with the law with strict respect for the rights and guarantees of the people accused. The Public Prosecutor's Office has made known all the evidence at trial and will continue doing so in accordance with the law, guaranteeing always due criminal process so as to respect the rights of both the victims of crime and of those accused and of everyone involved in the criminal trial process. Because we as the Public Prosecutor's Office owe it to the victims of crime to represent society in general as well as the victim of the crime based on the principles of legality and objectivity.
TcS : Is it correct to say that all the accused who are being portrayed as political prisoners have been accused of criminal offenses?
Dr. Javier Morazán : Impunity does not exist in Nicaragua. Our justice system stands out for the access to justice, for being effective, for professional and objective investigations, for a high level of clarification of events, for having a transparent and expeditious criminal justice system n which there is hardly any delay in justice being done, which has been recognized internationally. Whereas on the other hand, we know of countries where impunity runs at 90%. Our investigations suggest that the the authors of the events in the context of the months of April to June this year, calculated all aspects, including the deaths that needed to happen. These people were and are anxious for their to be deaths so as to use them as a figure, as a number, as a fact, as a destructive proof, as a form of grabbing attention and justifying the intervention of other interests. That is why they they organized a strategy of social manipulation, they incited, directed and financed the violence, the hatred, the terror, the chaos, the destruction and the deaths of may innocent people. And after having obtained the deaths, the material authors seek to secure their impunity and the underhand way of seeking impunity is to attribute to the material authors of the murders, kidnappings, tortures and arson the category of political prisoners, ignoring the grief of the victims, naturally, because in the thinking of terrorists human lives have no value.
The radical extremism of some people using the smokescreen of “criminalizing protest” seeks impunity for these crimes. They fear the progress of clarification of the events. Those who seek impunity are trying to turn upside down the deepest values that we all share in the global village. They want our society to accept as political prisoners people who have murdered, tortured, kidnapped, committed arson, terrorized and destroyed the country and the future of our children. These deeds are not political. They are serious crimes.
The Public Prosecutor's Office as our society’s representative and also that of the victims of crime will continue to defend those universal values, the right to life, the right to physical and psychological integrity, to security, to heath, to education, to development, bring to face justice based on evidence those who harm or put in danger our society’s most important legal goods, doing so with independence, autonomy and without any type of discrimination against victims of crime, people accused or other people involved in the criminal justice process.
The crimes for which the Public Prosecutor's Office has presented indictments are common crimes, crimes that threaten life. physical integrity, security, public calm, people’s freedom, or public and private property. They have to do with people who have murdered other people via arson, via asphyxiation or using firearms. These crimes of murder of victims have been accompanied by torture, by torture with physical bodily harm, psychological harm, people have been kidnapped, people have been burned, people whose houses have also been set on fire, or their businesses have been damaged and set on fire, people who have been victims of robbery with violence, robbery with intimidation. The people accused are charged with obstructing access to basic services like health care, like education and to food which are rights of the population. All these rights have been infringed and violated by the people accused.
The actions of the State to obtain justice for the victims and for society are legitimate. No one can argue for the impunity of serious criminal acts in a Social State based on Law. In practice only those who sympathize with such acts would dare to obstruct justice and truth by asking for the freedom of those who have murdered so many people using as a diversion of excuse the very same fundamental values of the State of Law, like liberty, democracy and human rights, values that have been abused by these criminal acts.
These deeds for which the Public Prosecutor's Office is bringing charges have nothing to do with political matters. Because setting out to murder someone has nothing to do with politics. One is dealing with depriving someone of their life. And that is a fundamental human right. And anyone who deprives another person of their life, everyone who kidnaps another person, anyone who causes bodily harm to another person, or who sets out to set a house on fire, the person who sets up obstacles and finances or puts a roadblock on the public highway which impedes someone else from realizing their right to health care, to education and their rights as a whole, that has nothing to do with politics. Whoever occupies or organizes the occupation of universities to turn them into bases for criminal activities in no way is doing politics. The population knows this. These are a common crimes that clearly and directly affect the people’s fundamental rights and faced with that the Public Prosecutor's Office is fulfilling its constitutional mission of investigating and bringing indictments based on the cases’ evidence.
The Public Prosecutor's Office does not evaluate political matters. What it evaluates are the proofs for convictions that exist against each person who committed any act prohibited by criminal justice norms and which significantly damage a protected legal good. And if the available proof is sufficient to establish who the authors are then it is our responsibility to ensure that they face justice for those acts. These are the criteria the Public Prosecutor's Office evaluates to decide on bringing a criminal case. Here we don’t have political prisoners nor have we accused anyone for their political opinions. One can review all the case files the Public Prosecutor's Office has presented and in not one of them have we accused anyone for their political opinions, nor for their religious opinion or belief, nor for organizing as part of a political party or not, nor for being in favor of or against some political party. Nor have we accused anyone for being for or against the government. We have accused people who have committed serious crimes against other people like murders, woundings, tortures, kidnappings, arson, damage. And the people accused, by these crimes, have induced fear and terror among the population.
Every person who has come here has been attended with no kind of discrimination and we have investigated and we have indicted and we have presented evidence at trial. The Prosecutor General has even invited the human rights organizations to come to the Public Prosecutor's Office and share their list of victims or any other information they want to present on the events we are investigating or on events they say we should be litigating or to reconcile the lists. They have been invited in writing and none of them, not one of those bodies has come here. And when the lists these organizations present are reviewed what we can see is a really large number of errors and technical inconsistencies without even minimum verification of the information presented. These are lists put together in a hurry. How is it possible that in a list appear repeated fifteen people. In one place you put one surname and later in the list with another first name and the surnames reversed or with only one surname, but they are the same person, or people who are alive appear there. or someone appears in the list based on an anonymous phone call. The organizations themselves accept that this is information they have yet to verify. However they sell a the most elevated number of deaths possible which implies a deliberate agenda. And then those numbers are taken as if verified by international organizations forming a vicious circle of disinformation or manipulated information intended to make less likely achieving the right to truth and justice.
TcS : How important is the figure of terrorism?
Dr. Javier Morazán : Terrorism is one of the greatest scourges of our time, as much at a national level as at an international level. The profile of people who engage in radical extremist conduct with no respect for universal values or the rights of other people in order to secure their destructive objective or the imposition of their intolerant, fanatical ideas of hatred. They seek to procure their ends at any price and any means justifies the end, all means are valid. Some of them induce the commission of crimes from any platform and take part in the planning, direction, financing and execution of violence.
They call for and finance criminal acts and justify any atrocious crime by its result and those who die thanks to their manipulation they consider a calculated win for their terror-based cause. Valuing life at little or nothing, for the terrorist deaths are a number they need to increase as much as they can. These people are egocentric, irresponsible who find convenient, are interested in and believe favorable to them producing the greatest number of deaths. To do so they continue generating the actions that produce them.
These are people who need to demonstrate ungovernability, destabilization, terror, insecurity, hate, destruction and poverty at the cost of human lives. . They take satisfaction from the suffering or terror of the population. They seek to recruit people to radicalize and use in the attacks that they plan. They are being investigated and with the available evidence they are being brought to the justice they deserve for each dead person, for each person they wounded, for every person who was affected by their crimes.
The characteristics that best identify terrorism are its indiscriminate violence, it extends its effects to the totality of the population; its unpredictability, it acts by surprise mixed with terror. Its immorality produces unnecessary suffering, striking the most vulnerable areas; its disruption of public order (for example, creating uproar, killing people, mass intimidation); its threats against people’s lives or those of their families or of destroying where people live; the trails of death produced in the streets; the taking of hostages or kidnapping of people. It is indirect too diverting the populations gaze to a point that is not their real target.
Terrorism is able to get legitimacy so as to give it solidity, so it seeks broader social support so as to present an increasingly bigger challenge, trying to legitimize its violence which explains the importance of manipulating public opinion and getting the news media on its side. getting legitimacy for its actions via propaganda gives importance to the propaganda fronts these terrorist organizations create. Within the means used to carry out terrorist actions figure various forms of physical violence against people, like kidnapping, torture, murders; various forms of moral violence, like threats or social pressure; various forms of violence against private or public goods, like their destruction using explosive or incendiary materials.
From the methodological point of view, a group can be considered terrorist that carries out kidnappings, attacks with bombs, murders, threats or systematic coercion. Technically these acts are designed to produce terror in the opposing population an there is no doubt in defining them as terrorist acts. Many of these circumstances have figured in the events where the Public Prosecutor's Office has made indictments.
When a person or a group of people organize to install a roadblock that obstructs people’s free transit, or the free exercise of people’s rights, and on top of that it turns into a center of operations to commit crimes, from which they set out to kidnap people or else kidnap and torture people who arrive there, beat them up, rob them and then finish them off by killing them. When there are people promoting, financing or carrying out this behavior intended to cause serious bodily harm, intended to kill other people using weapons and with the purpose of instilling fear in the population, causing terror and intimidation and leaving the population intimidated, and taking matters to the extreme of maintaining sequestered and under their criminal control a whole community or city and trying to do the same with an entire country, that enters into the definition of the crime of terrorism as contemplated n the United Nations Convention against financing, precisely, terrorist activity.
This Conventions was adopted by the United Nations Organization in December 1999 and ratified by Nicaragua in April 2002 under the government of President Bolaños, via Presidential decree 3287. generating as a commitment for our country precisely those international commitments supervised by the International Financial Action Group and specifically the Latin American Financial Action Group which in 2017 in its evaluation of Nicaragua recommended legislative reforms to make more effective its actions against money laundering, against financing of terrorism, against terrorism itself and against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Nicaragua, precisely so as to comply with those international standards approved this law against asset laundering, Law 977, on July 20th this year. This law was approved after all these criminal events. So it is a law that the Public Prosecutor's Office has not applied nor have we invoked it in relation to events that took place between April 18th and May, June July of this year based on the principle of the non-retroactive nature of criminal law. The applicable law is the anti-terrorist legislation active since 2008.
Even so with the intention of manipulating the population it has been said that this law was passed with the aim of criminalizing certain actions in spite of the fact that this law was being worked on a long time before April 18th. And once the events of April took place the legislative process was suspended. Rather it was left to wait and the law was not approved until July 20th because a GAFILAT evaluation meeting was scheduled for the end of that month. That means this law is not applicable to the events prior to July 20th. Nor in the future canit be applied to any protest since it applies to terrorist acts and if they were considered to criminalize protest no country would have adopted the United Nations definition of terrorism or else every country in the world would be criminalizing it on the basis of that Convention.
The people interested in promoting conflict and thus more violence and deaths to justify more funding for their radical actions try to discredit the work of the Public Prosecutor's Office against people who have committed serious crimes, hurting people and Nicaraguan society alleging criminalization of protest. It’s common that those who are behind the material authors of terrorism structure their media campaigns so as to demand the freedom and the impunity of those who under their manipulation committed serious crimes and to do so they demand their recognition as political prisoners. That manipulation is a kind of motivation to recruit and radicalize people so as to continue their wave of violence and at the same time ensure that the people accused don’t cooperate with the justice system so as to lessen the chances of those behind the terrorism being exposed
In these kinds of events, the same people calling for violence subsequently seek impunity alleging criminalization of peaceful protest. But it’s important to emphasize categorically that the Public Prosecutor's Office has not accused anyone for participating in a peaceful march. The Public Prosecutor's Office has not indicted anyone for demonstrating peacefully. It has not accused anyone here for politics nor for having a political belief or for their political feelings nor for being for or against the government or for or against a given political party. The Public Prosecutor's Office has accused people who have committed serious crimes and who on top of that want to cover themselves by manipulating public opinion in favor of the people who committed those crimes. But the proof of their actions has been uncovered by our investigations, by the criminal justice process and in the community that they terrorized and destroyed.
The Public Prosecutor's Office has accused people who have committed serious crimes against other people, against the population and Nicaraguan society. The deeds and crimes committed are murder, arson, homicide, serious bodily harm, damage to property and terrorism. Why? Precisely because they committed all that large number of criminal acts with the purpose of intimidating the population,self-evidently greatly disturbing public order. So then those elements are treated under our criminal norms as crimes and we are obliged as the Public Prosecutor's Office to bring charges against the people concerned because that is our job. Our job is to represent the victims of crime and in all the indictments we have made there are victims of crime. There we identify the victims of robbery, the victims of homicide, the victims of murder, the victims of terrorism, the victims of arson, the victims of criminal damage. The victims are there. But a great manipulation has happened and the victims are kept out of sight. But we as the Public Prosecutor's Office are obliged to see the victims of the crimes committed and represent them in criminal trials and we have received the denunciations of crimes from everyone who has come to us, making no distinction.
The more than 13 international instruments our country has signed and the protection of our population against this outrageous crime obliges us to prosecute this crime of terrorism with the legislation active at the moment the acts were committed as the self-same international convention for the suppression of the financing of terrorism states in its article 6:
“Each State party will adopt the measures that are necessary, including, when it is relevant, the adoption of internal legislation to ensure the criminal acts contemplated in the ambit of this Convention may not be justified under any circumstances by considerations of a political, philosphic, idological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar kind.”
The Public Prosecutor's Office fulfils its constitutional function and each case if subject not only to verification but to rigorous investigation. When we take the decision to accuse someone we do so because we have done an investigation and have support for the accusation with clear evidence, with witnesses, with scientific proof and with the sole concern of ensuring justice for the victims of crime and for society.
TcS : Can you discuss the case of Amaya Coppens Zamora in this context?
Dr. Javier Morazán : We in the Public Prosecutor's Office brought charges against Amaya Eva Coppens Zamora and six other people for the crime of terrorism, illegal possession and carrying of firearms, simple kidnapping, armed robbery, serious bodily harm and obstruction of access to public services. This accusation presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office is based on witness testimony, expert proof and material evidence that establishes that this person Amaya Eva Coppens Zamora and the other six accused between April 20th and the end of June organized to set up a roadblock at a place known as San Benito on the road leading to Managua, near a gas station. They turned that roadblock into a center of criminal activity where they detained people arriving there, they kidnapped them, they robbed them and also beat them up.
The same thing happened on April 20th in Leon on this occasion when this same group of people under the orders also of this same Amaya Coppens intercepted, detained, beat with stones and steel mortar tubes three police officers from León. Likewise, on May 23rd two individuals detained a civilian victim, Luis David Arias at a roadblock also in San Benito. They detained the victim, these individuals under orders from Amaya Eva Coppens according to our investigation. These people detained people and took them to Amaya Eva and she was the one who took decisions and she ordered the others to beat him up, to steal his belongings and that was done on her orders. There is the testimony of the victim Luis David Arias.
The same is the testimony of Jose María Vanegas who in the same way was trying to pass through one of the roadblocks directed by Amaya Eva Coppens according to the police investigation and they detained this victim with his motorbike. He tried to escape on his motorbike. They pursued him, caught him and took him to Amaya Eva Coppens at the roadblock. They take him to her and she along with the others took his belongings from him, his mobile phone, his money, a ring and the keys to the motorbike. Then they kept him kidnapped for several hours. Thee beat him up. They blindfolded him. Beat him up and then let him go.
So we can see that these actions by Amaya Eva Coppens based on the investigation set out in the police file and in the prosecution file that we have presented to the judge and to the judicial authorities, all this evidence backs up these events that the victims have come and denounced.
According to our investigation Amaya Eva Coppens organized and set up the roadblock and that at that roadblock blocked people’s freedom of movement and also detained people who were traveling near the roadblock, they blindfolded them, they kidnapped them, they beat them and stole from them for the purpose of causing intimidation in the population, causing terror and fear. Because that is what these kinds of actions provoke. If you live in a city and know there are a series of places like these roadblocks where there are people determined to detain you and block your way, to beat you up, to cause you bodily harm, to rob you and keep you kidnapped and murdering people there and also setting out at night to commit all kinds of crimes, all that obviously causes anguish, it causes fear, it causes intimidation.
In this case of Amaya Eva Coppens, for example, when they detained one of the victims, they beat him with metal tubes and even dropped paving blocks on his head and that put the life of the victim in grave danger. All these acts by these people who were committing these kinds of serious crimes there with weapons, which were taken from them when they were arrested, caused fear and terror in the population. All this evidence, the denunciations of the victims, the available proof that supports them, we presented to the judicial authority against these people. As you can see these people have nothing to do with political concerns. They have nothing to do with peaceful marches.
Whoever sets up a roadblock infringes the criminal norms, commits a crime and every such action against other people has a criminal penalty established by law. Such actions are not of a political nature but a criminal act. They have nothing to do with peaceful marches or demonstrations. They have to do with serious crimes, with acts of delinquency, with actions that gravely threaten the public order of Nicaraguan society. And that is why the Public Prosecutor's Office is obliged to indict them and present them to the courts and that is what the Public Prosecutor's Office has done.
It is important to call on the population not to fall into criminal behavior, not to let themselves be used to commit crimes, because such actions wound the fundamental rights and as such we are called on to investigate them, prosecute them and punish them. Those who direct the terror always seek to manipulate opinion radicalizing vulnerable groups, people on low incomes, people at odds with the criminal law, among others, so as to use them in attacks on the vulnerable population and that gives rise to the need to be alert to these terrorist threats that can disguise or seek to excuse their extreme violence using the values of democracy, liberty and human rights.
* Dr. Javier Morazán is the Director of the Special Unit against Organized Crime of Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office