Managua Accuses 13 in Armed Forces of Murder

The Nicaraguan government, stung by international criticism of its counterinsurgency methods, has brought murder charges against 13 Sandinista soldiers, security agents and paramilitary gunmen in the deaths of seven unarmed civilians suspected of aiding the Contras.

In a quiet admission of revolutionary power gone awry, nine of the gunmen have been sentenced in recent weeks to prison terms ranging from six to 30 years, two are on trial and two others are being sought, according to an unpublished Sandinista report to the New York-based human rights group Americas Watch.

The official account is challenged, however, by witnesses who say they have seen two of the convicted officers still on duty. The government insists they are both behind bars.

Over the past year, Americas Watch has repeatedly denounced a “pattern of summary executions by government forces” in Nicaragua and listed evidence of 51 killings and the disappearance of 13 persons in Sandinista custody.

The government’s reply early this month, its most substantial effort to clarify these cases, coincides with well-publicized Sandinista moves to end the war by freeing Contra prisoners and offering amnesty and farm land to rebel soldiers under an Aug. 7 Central American peace accord.

“It proves that impunity is not the norm here,” Wilma Nunez Escorcia, president of the government’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, said this week in an interview. “A government that punishes violators of human rights cannot itself be called a violator.”

Leaders of the U.S.-backed Contra movement, which faces the loss of its sanctuaries in Honduras by Dec. 5 under the peace accord, are telling their 11,000 followers that security agents might harass or even kill them, as a result of Sandinista policy or indiscipline, if they return to Nicaragua unarmed.

While the still-unfinished murder investigations appear to offer a test of both sides’ assertions, the results so far are inconclusive.

Little Zonal Impact

Because the convictions were not announced publicly, they have made little impact in the northern rural war zones where the killings occurred. And the reported sightings of convicted men on the loose have cast doubt on the intention of the trials.

The highest-ranking officer tried, Lt. Francisco Gonzalez Siles, was sentenced July 17 to the maximum 30-year prison term for the separate killings last fall of farmers Adrian Zeledon and Miguel Angel Ramirez Davila in a hamlet near Pantasma, where Gonzalez Siles worked for the Interior Ministry’s state security office.

Relatives of both victims said this week they were not aware that the officer, known and feared in the region as “Chico Tiro,” had been found guilty.

And when President Daniel Ortega went to war-divided Pantasma on Aug. 15 for a conciliatory speech to the nation, promising the release of about 1,200 jailed Contra collaborators in the coming weeks, five farmers said they saw Gonzalez Siles supervising a presidential security contingent north of the town.

“I don’t really believe that justice will be done,” said Rosalina Flores de Zeledon, widow of one of the victims. “How could it be? The Sandinistas really were pleased with Chico Tiro’s work.”

The top Sandinista official in Pantasma, Reynaldo Guadamuz, insisted that Gonzalez Siles has been imprisoned since his arrest last month. Nunez said Thursday: “I have rechecked with the military prosecutor. All those convicted have to be in jail.”

The prosecutor began investigating the killings near Pantasma and elsewhere, Americas Watch was told, within days after The Times reported them last April.

The news accounts, based on testimony gathered by reporters and by Americas Watch, tied most of the killings to a campaign to break up the Contras’ civilian support networks in northern Nicaragua after most of the rebel troops had retreated to Honduras.

Both Pantasma victims were seized near their farmhouses, marched to remote jungle clearings and executed. Juan Ramon Mairena Chavarria, identified as an army agent, was sentenced to 15 years for the fatal stabbing of Zeledon under Gonzalez Siles’ orders.

A local state security chief, Aran Molina Perez, and a subordinate, Felix Pedro Jarquin, were sentenced to 16 years each for strangling an alleged Contra messenger, Sergio Molina Monje, near Rio Blanco. Two other agents and two of the paramilitary gunmen received eight-year terms as accomplices.

Nunez said that all three murders were clear examples of abuse of authority in counterinsurgency operations. She said the others were less so.

6-Year Sentence

In one, Sandinista soldier Luis Concepcion Arauz Flores was sentenced to six years for killing a man with whom he had “a very personal enmity” before five witnesses near the town of Quilali, she said. Americas Watch reported that witnesses had seen Arauz on duty after he was sentenced.

In two other cases, in Apantillo and Wiwili, investigators identified the killers as civilians, even though they wore military uniforms and had often been seen on military patrols. They are on trial in civilian courts.

Witnesses to the Apantillo execution, of Roman Catholic lay preacher Felicito Peralta, told Americas Watch that a state security official widely suspected in that village as the man who ordered it had been absolved after two weeks in jail.

Two former soldiers are being sought in one of five other killings in Apantillo in the past two years.

Eleven cases listed by Americas Watch were closed without any criminal charges, Nunez said, because the victims were shot in cross-fire or while trying to escape, or because evidence against the defendants was weak. Three people listed as missing turned up alive. Investigations are under way in 41 remaining cases and 10 are “nearly complete,” she added.

Juan Mendez, executive director of Americas Watch, said the official account proved the pattern of abuses his organization had denounced, even though the Sandinistas rejected overall responsibility for them.

“We feel we have succeeded in making the government realize the importance of this problem,” he said. “This is an encouraging first step. We are getting preliminary reports that the killings themselves have stopped. That is even more encouraging.”

Mendez expressed concern that some of those punished might still be on duty and said he expects investigations of pending cases to continue. But he emphasized that Americas Watch is getting better cooperation from the Sandinistas than from “some other countries in the region,” which he did not identify.

Interior Minister Tomas Borge has agreed to open Nicaragua’s jails for inspection by human rights groups next week to settle a dispute over how many prisoners are held on security charges. He put the number at 1,440; opposition groups estimate 6,000.

The government’s decision to free most Contra fighters and collaborators while jailing Sandinistas for wartime abuses has caused resentment within the ruling party. It is apparently to minimize such strains that the recent trials have not been publicized.

“Chico Tiro is a comrade who has risked his life during years of war, and now he is paying for the errors he is accused of,” Guadamuz said of his convicted subordinate in Pantasma. “On the other side, there are Contra chiefs who have killed, and they are about to go free. This is inconceivable. We are putting our own people in jail and letting the enemy out.”