Outspoken Nicaraguan opposition figure Roberto Samcam shot to death at his home in Costa Rica
A retired Nicaraguan military officer turned outspoken critic of President Daniel Ortega was shot to death on Thursday, June 19, at his home in Costa Rica, authorities said. Roberto Samcam, 67, had been living in exile since July 2018 when paramilitaries assaulted his home in Nicaragua.
Police say a man entered the condominium complex where Samcam lived Northeast of the Costa Rican capital of San José and went directly to the retired major's home around 7:30 am. Without saying a word, the man shot Samcam multiple times with a 9mm pistol, according to Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Organization. The shooter escaped.
Word of Samcam's killing spread rapidly among the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who have sought refuge in Costa Rica since Ortega cracked down on widespread protests in 2018. In 2020, Samcam served as chain-of-command expert for the Court of Conscience, organized by Costa Rica's Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, to collect testimony of those who suffered torture and other abuses at the hands of the government.
The exercise was in part to build cases to eventually take to regional and international human rights bodies. "We are documenting each case so that it can move on to a trial, possibly before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights," Samcam said at the time. He said government officials were involved in the abuses.
In 2022, Samcam published a book titled Ortega: El calvario de Nicaragua, which roughly translates to Ortega: Nicaragua's Torment. Last year, he published another text describing in detail how he watched Ortega build a dictatorship.
In January 2024, another Nicaraguan exile, Joao Maldonado, was shot seven times in the street outside Costa Rica's capital. He survived and accused a cell of Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front of responsibility for the attack.
Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have driven hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans into exile and imprisoned then stripped hundreds more of their citizenship. Murillo − who is also the Nicaraguan government's spokesperson − did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about Samcam's killing.
Since crushing the 2018 protests, the government has systematically pursued any voice of opposition. The government has shuttered hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and persecuted religious groups, including the Catholic church.
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France 24
10 hours ago
- France 24
Critic of Nicaragua's Ortega shot dead in exile in Costa Rica
Major Roberto Samcam, 66, was gunned down at his apartment building in San Jose, reportedly by men pretending to deliver a package. "It was something we did not expect, we could not have imagined it," Samantha Jiron, Samcam's adoptive daughter, told AFP from her home in Madrid. Nicaraguan rights groups and exiled dissidents immediately blamed the government of Ortega and his co-president wife Rosario Murillo. "Roberto was a powerful voice" who "directly denounced the dictatorship" of Ortega, Samcam's wife Claudia Vargas told reporters in San Jose as she fought back tears. His job, she said, was to "expose human rights violations" in his homeland. The head of Costa Rica's judicial police, Randall Zuniga, said that the attackers took advantage of the fact that Samcam's apartment building was unguarded in the mornings. The gunman "called out to... Roberto," who "approached without knowing" the danger, Zuniga said. "When he was within striking range, the individual began shooting at him and hit him at least eight times," he told reporters. The Nicaraguan news site Confidencial reported that the killers fled the scene by motorbike. The US State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said on X that it was "shocked" by Samcam's murder and offered Costa Rica help in "holding the assassins and those behind them accountable." Nicaragua's former ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields, who lives in exile in the United States, called the killing "an act of cowardice and criminal political revenge by the dictatorship of Nicaragua." "The manner of the crime indicates political motives. This is very serious," Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli, exiled in Spain, stated on X. Neither Ortega nor his government commented on the case. Samcam, who was a political analyst, had spoken out frequently against the government in Managua, which he fled in 2018 to live with his wife in Costa Rica. That year, protests against Ortega's government were violently repressed, resulting in more than 300 deaths, according to the UN. In January last year, another Nicaraguan opposition activist living in Costa Rica, Joao Maldonado, was shot while driving with his girlfriend in San Jose. Both were seriously wounded. While the motive of that attack was the object of much speculation, Samcam's killing fueled suspicion among Nicaraguans that it may also have been linked to his political activities. 'Night of long knives' Former Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solis called Samcam's murder "for his frontal opposition to the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship" an "outrageous and extremely serious act." "I feel that Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are initiating a 'Night of the Long Knives'... due to the regime's weakening," Dora Maria Tellez, a former associate of Ortega turned critic, said from Spain, where she too is in exile. The "Night of the Long Knives" was a bloody purge of rivals ordered by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1934. "They resort to the execution of a retired ex-military officer, whom they believe has a voice that resonates within the ranks of the army," Tellez told the Nicaraguan news outlet 100% Noticias. Ortega, now 79, first served as president from 1985 to 1990 as a former guerrilla hero who had helped oust a brutal US-backed regime. Returning to power in 2007, he became ever more authoritarian, according to observers, jailing hundreds of opponents, real and perceived, in recent years. Ortega's government has shut down more than 5,000 non-governmental organizations since the 2018 mass protests that he considered a US-backed coup attempt. Thousands of Nicaraguans have fled into exile, and the regime is under US and EU sanctions. Most independent and opposition media operate from abroad.
LeMonde
14 hours ago
- LeMonde
Outspoken Nicaraguan opposition figure Roberto Samcam shot to death at his home in Costa Rica
A retired Nicaraguan military officer turned outspoken critic of President Daniel Ortega was shot to death on Thursday, June 19, at his home in Costa Rica, authorities said. Roberto Samcam, 67, had been living in exile since July 2018 when paramilitaries assaulted his home in Nicaragua. Police say a man entered the condominium complex where Samcam lived Northeast of the Costa Rican capital of San José and went directly to the retired major's home around 7:30 am. Without saying a word, the man shot Samcam multiple times with a 9mm pistol, according to Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Organization. The shooter escaped. Word of Samcam's killing spread rapidly among the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who have sought refuge in Costa Rica since Ortega cracked down on widespread protests in 2018. In 2020, Samcam served as chain-of-command expert for the Court of Conscience, organized by Costa Rica's Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, to collect testimony of those who suffered torture and other abuses at the hands of the government. The exercise was in part to build cases to eventually take to regional and international human rights bodies. "We are documenting each case so that it can move on to a trial, possibly before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights," Samcam said at the time. He said government officials were involved in the abuses. In 2022, Samcam published a book titled Ortega: El calvario de Nicaragua, which roughly translates to Ortega: Nicaragua's Torment. Last year, he published another text describing in detail how he watched Ortega build a dictatorship. In January 2024, another Nicaraguan exile, Joao Maldonado, was shot seven times in the street outside Costa Rica's capital. He survived and accused a cell of Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front of responsibility for the attack. Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have driven hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans into exile and imprisoned then stripped hundreds more of their citizenship. Murillo − who is also the Nicaraguan government's spokesperson − did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about Samcam's killing. Since crushing the 2018 protests, the government has systematically pursued any voice of opposition. The government has shuttered hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and persecuted religious groups, including the Catholic church.
France 24
6 days ago
- France 24
Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua, dead at 95
Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, "died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children," said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro managed to bring to an end a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the 'Contras' fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of the big proxy battlegrounds of the Cold War. Chamorro put her country on the path to democracy in the difficult years following the Sandinista revolution of 1979, which had toppled the US-backed right-wing regime of Anastasio Somoza. In a country known for macho culture, Chamorro had a maternal style and was known for her patience and a desire for reconciliation. When she won the 1990 election at the head of a broad coalition, she defeated Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista guerrilla leader and icon who is now president again. Ortega has been in power for 17 years and is widely criticized by governments and rights groups as having crushed personal freedoms, all political opposition and judicial independence with autocratic rule. Chamorro "represented a contribution for the peace necessary in our country," Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who has the title of co-president, said in a statement. The former leader died in Costa Rica, where she moved in 2023, to be close to her children, three of whom are living here in exile because of their opposition to Ortega. Chamorro -- Nicaraguans referred to her affectionately as "Dona Violeta" -- had been living far removed from public life for decades. In her later years, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease. "Her legacy is unquestionable," said Felix Madariaga, a Nicaraguan academic and political activist living in exile in the United States. "She led the transition from war to peace, healing a country destroyed by war. The contrast with Ortega is clear and deep," said Madariaga. 'Typical of a homemaker' Chamorro was the widow of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, who came from one of Nicaragua's most prominent families. As owner and chief editor of the newspaper La Prensa, he was killed in 1978 in an attack blamed on the regime of Anastasio Somoza. His death propelled Chamorro to take over the newspaper and, eventually, to get into politics. After the Sandinistas seized power in 1979, she became the only female member of a national reconstruction government. But she quit that junta in 1980, believing the Sandinistas were moving too far to the left and into the sphere of communist Cuba. Chamorro became prominent in the opposition to the Sandinistas as they fought the 'Contra' rebels financed by the United States under Ronald Reagan. In 1990, she stunned the country by winning the presidency -- and beating Ortega -- as leader of a coalition of 14 parties. During the campaign, she was known for wearing white and had to use a wheelchair because of a knee injury. In her memoirs, Chamorro said she won because she gained the trust of war-weary Nicaraguans as she spoke in simple language "typical of a homemaker and a mother." "In the macho culture of my country, few people believed that I, a woman, and what is more, handicapped, had the strength, energy and will" to beat Ortega, she wrote.
