Nicaragua Courts, Jailings Criticized by Rights Group

A private human rights organization reported Thursday that Nicaragua’s leftist government is guilty of “disturbing and unwarranted . . . violations of human rights,” many of them in response to the guerrilla war waged by U.S.-backed rebels.

In a 159-page report, the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights charged that the Sandinistas’ “popular tribunals,” a separate court system set up to try suspected rebel sympathizers, “undermine the basic due process rights of Nicaraguan citizens accused of such crimes.”

The group also criticized measures that allow police to impose prison sentences of up to two years for certain crimes without trial and to detain suspects incommunicado for indefinite periods.

‘Misleading Allegations’

However, it also faulted the Reagan Administration for making “seriously misleading and exaggerated allegations of human rights abuses by the Nicaraguan government.” The United States, it said, must share the blame for the Sandinistas’ excesses because of its support for the rebels, known as contras.

“We believe that the rapidly deteriorating relations between the governments of Nicaragua and the United States are exacerbating Nicaragua’s existing human rights problems and creating new ones,” the report said.

“The government of the United States, which has supported the contra war and actively promoted the abusive manner in which it has been conducted, shares substantial responsibility for the human rights violations that are occurring in Nicaragua today.”

The predominantly liberal group added: “None of the criticisms in this report . . . is intended to justify the Administration’s efforts.”

The report, based on four investigative missions to Nicaragua over the last 15 months, said the Sandinistas have established a consistent pattern of weakening the independence of their courts and judges.

Tribunals Criticized

It called the growth of the “popular tribunals” especially troubling. The three-member tribunals, which handle “national security cases,” consist mainly of Sandinista militants--”in other words, the political enemies of the accused,” the report said.

The tribunals allow defense lawyers only a few days to prepare their cases, accept flawed evidence, convict under “a less than rigorous burden of proof” and allow no appeal to the regular court system, the report charged.

A 1980 law allowing police to impose prison sentences of up to two years for hoarding, economic speculation, drug trafficking, cattle rustling and “insulting authority” is “a particularly disturbing assault on the right to be tried by an independent tribunal,” the report said.

“Forms of psychological coercion are routinely employed during interrogation of pretrial detainees,” it noted. “Physical abuse appears to take place in isolated instances.”

But the Sandinistas have improved their human rights performance in some areas, the report said. Sandinista officials have in the past refused to release several political convicts when their sentences were up, but “prisoners are now released as a matter of course once their terms expire,” it said.