An official photograph from a state visit to Washington, D. Roosevelt, who is smiling broadly at something or someone in front of him. Somoza is serious, distracted, top hat and gloves held in his left hand like a tray, staring outside the scene to his left while the crippled FDR gamely holds himself upright on the arm of a smiling Army officer in full regalia to his left. Another photo from the same trip shows Somoza and FDR in the back of an open limo wearing top hats, Somoza looking wary and Roosevelt uncomfortable.
A chubby Somoza wears a tight military uniform complete with Sam Browne belt, the peak of his service cap pushed slightly upward for a clear view of his round, corpulent face. He was wise to be careful. He would be murdered a few days later.
The victory margin of his first election two decades earlier was roughly , votes to and served as a model for the whole Somoza era. Photographs from that first campaign show him trotting around on a white horse in military uniform, surrounded by his thugs and waving an American flag. He was going there for his favorite dish and specialty of the house , chancho con yuca , a local delicacy, but whether he made it or not is a matter of conjecture, though the rest of what he did that day is history.
Killed instantly in a blizzard of return fire—numerous bullet holes still pock the scarred walls of the club—the poet knew his fate beforehand, so also left a sealed letter for his mother, a moving explanation that what he did was what any Nicaraguan who loved his country should have done a long time before.
Somoza lingered for days, but the future was already plotted. His oldest son, Luis Somoza Debayle, was primed to succeed him as president, which he did almost immediately, and his youngest, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was in place as commander of the National Guard, no more than a private mafia by that point.
Considered a milder, more businesslike leader than his father, Luis maintained a smokescreen of reform that pleased the U.
As with all three Somozas, elections were fixed during his tenure like boxing matches, his supposed commitment to modernization and economic reform his one claim to Somoza uniqueness applied only to the privileged a tiny minority , and his main political achievement seems to have been an amendment to the constitution to prevent his psycho brother from running for president.
Nothing Luis Somoza did made any difference to anyone but himself. Picking up where his father left off, Somoza III and his thug army pillaged the country until a natural catastrophe brought everything about him into terrible focus for Nicaraguans. In , two days before Christmas, a devastating earthquake struck Nicaragua, killing thousands of people and destroying vast stretches of Managua. Rather than help his people, Somoza began systematically looting the international relief that poured in.
He scooped up land on the cheap and resold it to his own government for relief camps at ten times the price, sold donated emergency items on the black market, used reconstruction money contributed by the U. On Wednesday, Daniel Ortega reappeared in public for the first time since May. Looking frail, the year-old delivered a typically bombastic speech which lasted for more than an hour and covered everything from North Korea's nuclear ambitions to the recent spate of arrests. He insists the actions were justified, and said the detainees would be "punished according to the law" for supposedly carrying out crimes against the state.
Not, however, if you are one of the president's critics. Gioconda Belli says Vice-President Murillo's recent speeches have been equally erratic, "a mixture of religion and insults which rail constantly against 'coup-plotters' and Satanism.
The government's narratives exhibit extreme levels of paranoia. In part, the presidential couple's fear and suspicion are rooted in the events of when protests over pension reforms quickly grew into much larger anti-government demonstrations. The authorities responded with lethal force and more than people were killed, the majority of them anti-Ortega protesters. The treason law and subsequent crackdown are signs the president and his wife view their rule as "fragile", he argues.
They have turned to the "only force they have left - an alliance between the military, the police and [radical pro-Ortega] paramilitaries". That is a potent and frightening prospect for any vocal critic or presidential rival. Every accused person shall be entitled to the following minimum guarantees, in equality of conditions:. That his guilt shall not be presumed until a formal sentence of imprisonment has been pronounced against him;.
That a sentence of imprisonment shall not be imposed unless the facts of the crime are fully proven, and unless there is a serious presumption of guilt; and that the sentence of imprisonment be pronounced within the ten days following the warrant for his arrest.
As a result, the Special Tribunals were authorized to proceed without this guarantee of due process. Regardless of the opinions as to the actual enforcement of the laws guaranteeing the right to a presumption of innocence, this right was not fully observed by the Special Tribunals in Nicaragua.
To the contrary, the judges of these Tribunals uniformly shared the view, as they told the Commission during its on-site observation and as the Commission was able to confirm on the basis of a number of sentences shown to it, the fact of having been a member of the former national Guard, or of bodies linked to it, was per se evidence that warranted a presumption of guilt.
As a result, the Special Tribunals began their investigation on the basis that all accused Somocists were guilty until they duly proved their innocence. However, for crimes other than that of illegal association, particularly the crime of wanton murder, the Special Tribunals on occasion used what is known as circumstantial evidence to presume the guilt of the accused.
Such a method, in and of itself, is not violative the right to a presumption of innocence. A number of legal systems admit that, under certain circumstances, the benefit of the presumption of innocence is waived, and as a result, the burden of proof reverts to the accused, if certain circumstantial evidence is present.
According to this view, whenever such circumstantial evidence exists, the accused is presumed guilty. During its on-site observation, the Commission looked further into the cases brought before the Special Tribunals, and found that in some cases, the accusation was based precisely on such circumstantial evidence, although this was not explicitly stated. Thus, in the case of a National Guard Officer accused of wanton murder, the evidence leading to a presumption of his guilt was that he was part of a patrol that had assassinated a number of people, National guard documents attested to the fact that on the day the crime was committed, he was a member of that patrol, and that he had gone out to patrol the areas where the murder had taken place.
Although there wee several cases in which recourse was had to circumstantial evidence, it should also be pointed out that in a good number of case, where such circumstantial evidence was not present, the principle of the presumption of innocence was dispenses with. According to this principle, no one may be convicted for commission of a crime not previously considered a crime under the law, and no penalty other tan the one established by law may be imposed.
While this principle has been respected in Nicaragua, it is important to note that serious doubts are raised as regards certain conduct formerly considered legitimate which is now held to be a crime. While the Commission has no doubt at all that certain officers of the National Guard must be held responsible for crimes against the international order and for wanton murder, it, at the same time, has serious reservations about the indiscriminate accusations of conspiracy to commit a crime, with which most of the members of the National Guard were charged, including those who had no direct responsibility of the commission of crimes, as was the case with physicians, dentists, administrative personnel, supply officers, drivers, barbers, or even soldiers who were not in a position to challenge the orders of their superior officers.
After the military defeat of Somoza and the National Guard, the natural corollary was to place the responsibility with those who had committed such serious crimes. This the Government of national Reconstruction decided to do, bringing those responsible to trial and sentencing them. At the same time, it stated that its own human rights conduct would conform to its international commitments.
The Commission is also aware of the efforts the Government has made to prosecute these individuals within the existing Penal Code. That does not mean, however, that abuses or irregularities were not committed in the operations of the Special Tribunals, or in the application of the guarantees for the administration of justice.
Ignoring the prudent counsel of the Supreme Court to increase the number of regular courts, it was decided for reasons of speed—later shown to be erroneous—to set up special tribunals to try the Somocists accused. The Commission trusts that now that the work of these Special Tribunals is ended and some of the defendants have been pardoned, all the sentences handed down by the Special Tribunals will be reviewed by a superior judicial authority, perhaps the Supreme Court or the Appeals Courts, and that all due process guarantees may be operative during such review.
As said earlier, the law entitled the National Emergency Law, of July 22, , and the Law on the Maintenance of Public Order and Security of July 20, , were repealed, the first in its entirety and the second in part, by Decree No.
Decree No. The repeal of the Emergency Law and the disappearance of the Special Emergency Tribunals meant a reduction in the scope of application of the law on the Maintenance of Public Order and Security, giving he impression that the Government of national Reconstruction was gradually annulling the exceptional, temporary measures that had been enacted, and that this process was related to a process of normalizing the situation in the country, which was now totally under control of the Government of National Reconstruction.
The part of the law still in effect refers to crimes such as disregarding the cease-fire, acts intended to reinstate the Somoza regime, or acts intended to submit the country to foreign domination.
The Commission has received a number of complaints under these provisions, which have been incorporated into the regular penal legislation.
Application of these provisions has been entrusted to the regular courts, through the summary procedure originally provided for the Special Emergency Tribunals. The procedure established for the Special Emergency tribunals, which the regular courts are currently applying in cases against those accused of counter-revolutionary activities, is as follows:.
Article 5 of Decree No. In other cases, the Court shall have up to ten days to make its ruling. Open Access and Research Funding. Open Access for Librarians. Open Access for Academic Societies. About us. Stay updated. Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations.
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