Humberto Belli, former Nicaraguan education minister and brother of acclaimed writer Gioconda Belli, thought he had left oppression behind when he fled his home country in June 2021 after anticipating correctly that the Daniel Ortega regime was about to arrest him.
But even though he now lives 1,000 miles away in Miami, Belli, 77, found that the regime has a long reach: He was among the 94 Nicaraguans, most of them in exile, declared enemies of the state by an Ortega judge and stripped of their citizenship and properties in the Central American nation.
“This is a monumental aberration of justice,” Belli said. “To be sentenced for a crime, first they have to grant you the right to defend yourself. They have to give you a trial and here there wasn’t one. They did not call us to defend ourselves, nor did they provide evidence for our (alleged) offenses. Instead, their judges suddenly announced rulings with very harsh sentences, taking away all of our property and our nationality.”
