The Nicaraguan Supreme Court of Justice this week definitively revoked the license of Yonarqui de los Ángeles Martínez García, a lawyer who defends dozens of political prisoners under the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.
It is the first time the Supreme Court has suspended a lawyer for life from exercising her functions since the socio-political crisis Nicaragua has been experiencing for five years.
“Ms. Yonarqui de los Ángeles Martínez García has been punished with the definitive suspension from the exercise of the professions of lawyer and notary, as of the notification of this sentence,” said the resolution issued on Tuesday (9) by the Supreme Court of Nicaragua.
The Supreme Court justices mentioned “followed news against” the lawyer but did not go into detail about the charges against her.
Yonarqui, who since April 2018 has been known in Nicaragua as “the lawyer of political prisoners” for gratuitously defending dozens of opponents accused of terrorism and other crimes, confirmed to EFE that she had been suspended for life and that the sentence does not admit the appeal.
She said she was disappointed, depressed, saddened, and worried about her integrity and family.
The lawyer was one of the voices denouncing the nighttime operation on May 3, in which at least 57 Nicaraguans, mostly opponents and critics of Daniel Ortega’s regime, were arrested and charged with crimes considered “treason against the homeland.”
Yonarqui pointed out the irregularities of these arrests, such as that they were carried out without a warrant and out of office hours, that express hearings were held in jurisdictions where the arrests had not been made, without defenders of their choice, and at dawn.
The lawyer, a beneficiary of the preventive measures extended by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), has been the victim of temporary detentions, harassment, and police intimidation in the political crisis Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018.
In a resolution dated December 2, 2020, the IACHR warned that Martínez and her family “find themselves in a serious and urgent situation,” that she suffered an attempted murder on November 5 of the same year that was not investigated by the authorities, and “death threats through text messages in which they showed images of violently murdered women.”
Nicaragua has been experiencing a political and social crisis since April 2018, which worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, his fourth consecutive and the second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president. In this election, all of Ortega’s main opponents were in prison or exile.
With information from EFE
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