In Nicaragua, Impunity Rides in Police Cars

Hanging in a wall at the home of the Reyes Ramirez family there is a collage with photographs of siblings Jose Efrain and Aura Marina, and their aunt Katherine Anielka Ramirez Delgadillo. They were murdered by anti-narcotics agents on the eve of July 11th, 2015. The images are the most observable memory in the household’s living room. “She (Aura Marina) was wearing that dress on the day she died”, says Yelka Nohemi Ramirez, mother and sister of the victims.

Yelka speaks nonchalantly of the collage: “He (Jose Efrain) was dressed like that when he left with the girl. My sister always dressed like that. The image shows him wearing a suit and tie; the girl with a white dress; and the aunt with a dark dress. On the day of their murder, Jose Efrain was 11; Aura Marina was 12; and Katherine was 22.

The mother has no problem speaking about the image’s details, yet she refuses to speak about what happened on the night they were murdered. “I already said what I could say”, excusing herself. Yelka does not want to talk about what has happened to the officers who participated in the events either.

According to official records, the events involved fourteen officers, nine of them were charged and convicted, eight are still in service in the institution, one is a civilian now, in spite of a judgment that defined sentences ranging between two and eleven years of jail time –depending on the level of responsibility established by the Attorney General’s Office– taking into account that the officer with the greatest responsibility was the commander of the operation, Captain Zacarias Salgado, whose conviction would end in 2026. However, he was awarded and promoted by President Daniel Ortega en 2018.

The Police praised the defense of the “revolution”, as the government is referred to, in the context of protests by opponents in 2018.
Photography / Taken from the National Police.

Officer Oscar Jose Vargas Rugama, a lieutenant in 2015, was promoted to captain on the same day. His conviction lasted until this year. The following were also promoted: Jairo Antonio Aguilar Hernandez and Johny Henry Palacio Jimenez to captains; Noel Antonio Altamirano to warrant officer; and Henry Cruz to inspector.

The family’s lawyer, Carlos Aleman, confirmed that the case is still pending resolution by the Court of Appeals five years after the crime; a legal impasse that has not prevented these eight active officers from being promoted by President Daniel Ortega.

According to a presidential agreement, divulged in the official gazette in 2018, Subcommissioner Juan Ramon Torres Espinoza was awarded the Medal of Honor for his “heroic actions at the risk of his life” and for the “protection of people, families and communities”.

The most noteworthy case for human rights organizations involves Captain Salgado, who was promoted to commissioner acting as second-in-command of TAPIR (quick intervention troops), an elite group of the Special Operations Directorate of the Police, accused of human rights violations.

In other words, Salgado, an expert sniper, was promoted two ranks above his when the crime was committed, in contrast with Law 228 of the Police, which establishes a minimum tenure of five years for captains and of five years in the next rank –subcommissioner–, which means that he should have only been promoted to commissioner by 2025.

GIEI, a group of independent experts appointed by the Organization of American States to investigate the abuses of 2018, interpreted Salgado’s promotion as a message of support –political endorsement– to the Police’s actions, given the fact that, so far, there have been no reports on “the existence of internal investigations to elucidate responsibilities”.

“With these new ranks we are acquiring responsibilities with our homeland, our revolution, with the people”, Salgado declared to journalists of the Police in an article posted in the institution’s website.

38 Gunshots

“Upon my return from church with my family, I was ambushed and shot by the Dantos (special unit of the Police). So I flee, and they continue shooting at me” Milton Antonio Reyes, father of the victims, recounted to the media with his bloodstained face and shirt.

The Reyes Ramirez family had attended an evangelical worship service in the sector of Villa Libertad, Milton took a shortcut through the sector of Las Cuatro Esquinas to get to their home at the Augusto Cesar Sandino neighborhood. They were driving a white Toyota Corolla.

Back then, the road was unpaved, narrow and dark, which affected their visibility. Also in the car, aside from Milton and the three victims, were Yelka Nohemi; Milton Ezequiel Reyes Ramirez, aged 4; Axel Antonio Reyes Ramirez, aged 14; and Miriam Natasha Guzman Ramirez, aged 5. These two were wounded by the gunshots.

Officially, the massacre was regarded as a mistake. According to the case’s judicial file, the National Police’s Anti-narcotics Directorate had received information that a “significant drug load” would be passing through the sector of Las Cuatro Esquinas –las Jagüitas–, that the criminals would be driving a light white vehicle and a motorcycle would join them for reconnaissance. Salgado and his team were assigned to the mission with the goal of arresting the drug traffickers.

Per judicial documents, Captain Salgado, in an act of “recklessness” failed to obey Police protocol to block roads, such as the use of light signals to stop pedestrians (orange cones, poles, fluorescent vests or gloves) and to identify Police officers. However, all of the officers were wearing “dark clothes, had their faces covered with ski masks and did not have any identification”.

The file adds that the agents were positioned in the sides of the road and divided in three groups in a stretch of 800 meters. The family entered the sector at around 8 p.m. Salgado “in an action considered dysfunctional, negligent and lacking control jumped to the road in front of the vehicle and signaled them to stop” as described in the judicial summary.

“The vehicle’s occupants think they are being robbed, they move on and speed up. The agents believe their captain has been run over and react by shooting at the vehicle, this occurs throughout the stretch of the road”, the document adds. There were 38 gunshots fired in total. The vehicle stopped after hitting a grey truck.

“I asked for help from the riot police and police agents present, and none of them assisted me. They only did something when they felt like it and saw me getting the bodies out of the car. Only then they helped me take the others to the hospital”, Milton told the media following the shoot-out.

The case caught the public opinion’s eye due to the violence enforced against the family and because armed officers stopped neighbors who tried to come to the aid of the victims.

The crime’s brutality diverges from the public stance of the top Police authorities, which have sold Nicaragua’s security as a model in the region. Based on official information, the Central American country has an average of eight murders per hundred thousand inhabitants in 2015, the year of the murder of the family members.

The Promise of Justice

First Commissioner Aminta Granera Sacasa, former Director General of the National Police visited the scene of the Reyes’ crime. Wearing a bulletproof vest, the Police Chief commented for the cameras: “This is a tragedy that has affected a Nicaraguan family and the Police. I am in shock, when I was briefed I was in a state of shock”.

“I have personally come here to see, to guarantee the father of these children, that the fellow police officers who are responsible for this will be in jail today, if they are not already. They will face legal proceedings”, she asserted.

Facing the cameras at all times, Granera called General Commissioner Ramon Avellan and instructed him to imprison the officers in the DAJ, Judicial Aid Directorate, located in El Chipote –reported by human rights organizations as a torture center during the dictatorships of Anastasio Somoza and Daniel Ortega– and that works as the center of operations of judicial investigations in the Central American country.

“The case will be forwarded to the Attorney General’s Office, so Internal Affairs (the Police) is off the case. This is a penal matter and they are going to trial”, she sentenced.

Granera also visited the family in the capital’s Manolo Morales hospital, where the wounded were taken. Facing the cameras, she hugged and cried with the relatives; she promised that “justice would be served”, which never happened. Granera disappeared after her public appearances and was replaced by Ortega’s son’s father-in-law, later appointed as general director, First Commissioner Francisco Diaz Madriz.

The current Director of the Police, Francisco Diaz with President Daniel Ortega and the First Commissioner Aminta Granera.
Photograph / File of Connectas.

Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, President of CENIDH (Nicaraguan Center of Human Rights), underlined that the massacre reminded her of the “actions” of Somoza’s Guard, “the famous phrase or strategy to shoot at anything that moves with which we are at war. This is dripped in blood”, she stated then.

Agustin Jarquin Anaya, who served as Comptroller General of the Republic and a former ally of the Sandinista ideology, stated: “the decline of professionalism in the Police is an important cause of the tragedy (…) it evinces how bad things are”.

Granera faced the harshest criticism, even from former Police commander officers such as Javier Lopez Lowery, who questioned the officers and listed the mistakes committed in the mission to Confidencial.

“Supervision failed, control failed, training failed, even in the units, enforcement command failed. If the chiefs had been closer to officials in that, their presence alone would have prevented subordinates’ bad behavior. A revision of the internal situation concerning the institution’s duties and rights regulations is in order, as well as the causes for which these police officers are being processed; let me tell you there are things that are difficult to eradicate and they (need) to talk about them with starkness”, Lopez Lowery said regretfully, he was national chief between 1985 and 1992.

Express Trial

On July 22^nd, 2015, assistant prosecutor Steffanie Perez Bojorge filed an accusation against nine of the fourteen officers for reckless homicide, recklessly causing injuries, exposure of others to harm and damages. The cause was presented in Managua’s fourth local penal court under Judge Alia Dominga Ampie, tied with the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

The defendants admitted to the crimes a day later at the initial hearing, thus avoiding a public oral trial.

“We want to apologize to the family, to the Nicaraguan society. We didn’t mean for this to happen. It was an accident. I am responsible and admit to the facts”, said Capitan Salgado. The other eight defendants delivered similar confessions.

Yelka, the victims’ mother responded: “Do not ask for forgiveness because that forgiveness will not bring me my children and sister back”.

Carlos Aleman Lopez, the lawyer of the Reyes Ramirez family claims that the officers admitted to the facts in order to “avoid” and in-depth investigation on what they “were up to on the night of July 11^th”.

“They were certain that other facts would be revealed if they went to trial”, he added.

Following the confessions, the Public Defense –in charge of the officers’ defense– petitioned the judge not to continue with the trial and to take the admission of the facts as “actions in favor” of the defendants. Judge Ampie granted the defense’s petition and imposed minimum penalties based on the defendants’ lack of criminal record and on the confession of the crime, both of which she considered as mitigating circumstances.

“This is not justice. I feel disappointed; they are going to burn in hell (…) I ask for justice. Bastards, they don’t deserve forgiveness; there is no justice here”, lamented Yelka after hearing the Judge’s decision.

Before the case’s outcome in the court, the mother had filed a legal complaint against an officer involved in the crime for attacking the body of her murdered child. “I asked for their help and assistance, but they failed to do it. I waited more than half an hour for someone to take me to the hospital. When I got them in the police car, this man kicked my son in the head. They treated him like a dog. I told him: damn you, you killed him and on top of everything you are kicking him!” Yelka declared to Confidencial on July 17^th, 2015.

The Judge read the judgment on Thursday, August 30th, 2015; the family of the victims was not present.

For the family’s lawyer, the “judgment was risible” and “did not adhere to the law” because the judge was unfit for the case, it had to have been submitted to a penal court. However, this law of the judiciary was passed over.

Another element, per Aleman Lopez, is that “the Attorney General’s Office failed to convey the victims’ feelings, they were openly advocating for the police officers”, he said; given that one of the controversies that has risen is the fact that the crime should have been classified as murder, based on the seriousness of the events, and not as reckless murder, which helped decrease the penalty.

“You feel helpless. A family asks the judicial system to uphold a right, but then you realize all the doors are shut for you”, he stated.

Carrion explains: “from the penal point of view, a massacre can never be considered reckless. They aimed to kill”.

The only police officer that left the institution in confusing circumstances was Jose Alejandro Fonseca Salmeron, spokesperson for Federacion Nicaragüense de Lucha Aficionada until January of last year. A team of CONNECTAS visited their office, but they had no luck. Although people that work in the office complex provided a contact with its President, Ardeshir Zack Asgar, he did not respond to a request for an interview.

As per the judgment, Fonseca Salmeron was convicted to nine years in prison, meaning he would be a free man again in 2024.

No Legal Battle will take Place

For lawyer Aleman Lopez, the promotions of Salgado and Vargas Rugama are “illegal” because the Court of Appeals in Managua has yet to decide on the case, despite the fact that the appeal against Ampie’s judgment was filed more than five years ago.

In the Nicaraguan legal system, judges decide if the detainee is kept under preventive detention while the judicial process is clarified, but since these officers are charged with murder, the immediate measure to enforce is prison.

Yelka Nohemi Ramirez being consoled following the murder of her children Jose Efrain and Aura Marina Reyes Ramire.

“Since the Court of Appeals has not delivered a decision yet, they (Salgado and Vargas) are subject to the judgment of the court of first instance, which convicted them to eleven and six years of jail. This judgment is in force”, explains Aleman.

CONNECTAS requested a comment to the Public Relations Office of the National Police in Managua, but received no response.

Despite the delay in the decision of the Court of Appeals and the “evident” lack of justice, Aleman asserts that the Reyes Ramirez family has “decided not to continue with the case”. “We have given up because no justice will be served with the current system”.

“We don’t want this to continue at national or international level”, he reiterates.

Yelka Ramirez and Milton Reyes regret the lack of justice, but they prefer to “live quietly”. “No one is looking for us and no one is harassing us because we are not meddling with anybody. God will serve justice; we have left it all in his hands”, says the mother of the victims of a country in which impunity rides in police cars.