Nicaraguan Tribunals Accused of Ignoring Rules of Law : Contra Suspects Face ‘Popular Justice’

Rafael Saenz, 25, was held without charge for 4 1/2 months by the State Security police. He was interrogated without having a lawyer present, and he was convicted on the basis of a confession that he swore he never made.

Saenz was sentenced this month by one of two Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals to 17 years in prison for collaborating with anti-Sandinista guerrillas, the so-called contras.

The controversial tribunal is revolutionary Nicaragua’s judicial response to the threat of counterrevolution. Saenz is one of almost 600 people who have been convicted and sentenced under this system since it was created in mid-1983.

The three-member tribunal is headed by a lawyer who belongs to the leftist Sandinista Front, Nicaragua’s ruling party. The two other members are former leaders of Sandinista Defense Committees, the revolution’s neighborhood-level “mass organizations.”

The other Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunal hears appeals against rulings by the first panel. It, too, is composed of a Sandinista lawyer and two former Defense Committee leaders.

Defense attorneys and human rights organizations argue that the tribunals’ judgments are prejudiced and that they disregard basic rules of evidence and principles of due process.

Sandinista spokesmen maintain that the tribunals must cut through legal red tape to administer “popular revolutionary justice” when state security is threatened. Because the government is at war with the U.S.-backed contras, the Sandinistas say, it cannot let the enemy hide behind legal technicalities.

In the government’s view, the “Somocista” enemy wants to bring back the kind of corrupt, dictatorial system that ruled in Nicaragua before the Sandinistas led an insurrection that toppled President Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

The prosecution in the case of Rafael Saenz said he belonged to Somoza’s National Guard until shortly before it collapsed. A carpenter and farmer, Saenz was arrested on Sept. 16, 1984, at his rural home in the province of Madriz in northern Nicaragua. He was taken to a local office of the General Directorate of State Security and later transferred to State Security’s main jail in Managua.

A two-page statement, signed by Saenz and dated Oct. 20, 1984, said he admitted being in frequent contact with an alleged counterrevolutionary named Susana Benavides. The statement, which the court called a confession, also said that:

--In September, 1982, a contra leader with the code name Okran visited Saenz at his house and offered him money to work with the rebels.

--In October, 1983, a contra leader named Vicente Perez, known by the code name Chuchu, arrived at Saenz’s house with 80 guerrillas and asked him to take a letter and some money to Perez’s wife.

--Saenz delivered the letter and money, and also bought the contras some supplies, including milk, cigarettes and bread.

--The next day, Saenz introduced Chuchu to a local man named Andres Zambrana, then heard the two talking about plans for 15 government militiamen to desert with their rifles and join the rebels.

--In April, 1984, a contra leader known as Rayo arrived with 200 guerrillas, asking if there were any army troops in the area, and Saenz told him there were not.

Saenz was formally charged on Feb. 4, 1985, with violating the Law on the Maintenance of Order and Public Security, the same statute used to prosecute all defendants under the Popular Anti-Somocista system. His first interview with a court-appointed lawyer came the following July 8, and he gave a deposition to the tribunal on Aug. 12.

In the deposition, Saenz denied that he had belonged to the National Guard. He also denied that he willingly collaborated with the contras.

“It is true that I lived in a war zone,” he said. “Armed people came, and I had to give them food.”

He said the guerrilla leader called Okran tied him up one night and accused him of working for State Security. Saenz denied that he knew any other contras who were named in the State Security statement.

“Those accusations that State Security makes are false,” he said. “The processing officer didn’t read any statement but only told me to sign. He didn’t say it was a statement, because they make you sign a bunch of papers . . . who knows what they are.”

The 35-page court record of the Saenz case includes no material evidence or testimony by other witnesses against him. Nevertheless, on Dec. 2, nearly 15 months after his arrest, the tribunal sentenced Saenz to 17 years in prison for violating the Law on the Maintenance of Order and Public Security and another law forbidding association for criminal purposes.

The two articles of the law on order and security that are cited in Saenz’s sentence prohibit “actions aimed at totally or partially submitting the nation to foreign domination or at jeopardizing its independence and integrity” and actions that “reveal political or security secrets.”

Saenz has the right to appeal before the other Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunal but not before any court in Nicaragua’s regular judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

“The government’s bold experiment with ‘popular justice’ has undercut the regular judiciary and diminished the enjoyment of rights that courts are charged to uphold,” said a report issued this year by the New York-based Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights.

Lino Hernandez, a lawyer who heads the Nicaraguan Permanent Commission on Human Rights, takes a stronger stand against the tribunals.

“They are tribunals of political vengeance, definitely,” Hernandez said in an interview. “In 85% of the cases, the proof and evidence against the prisoners are their own statements given to State Security. The tribunals say they trust the proof presented by State Security, and many times it is confessions obtained by torture.”

Omar Cortez, a former tribunal president and currently chief criminal prosecutor in the Justice Ministry, said the tribunals do attempt to obtain more evidence than is provided by State Security. But, Cortez said, “there are cases where it is difficult to gather other kinds of evidence in war zones.”

Armengol Cuadra, current president of the Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunal for appeals, said most of those convicted by the courts are from war zones and most have been involved with the contras.

Cuadra said in an interview that in the tribunal of first jurisdiction, 590 defendants have been convicted and 36 have been absolved. Most of the sentences range from three to 10 years in prison, although 30 were for the maximum of 30 years.

“In most cases, when the 30-year sentence is applied, it is not for a single crime but for several,” Cuadra said.

On appeal, more than 70 defendants have been absolved or granted amnesty, according to court records. More than 170 sentences have been reduced on appeal, and three have been increased.

Cuadra, 32, is a former prosecutor with the Justice Ministry, as is the president of the tribunal of first jurisdiction. Cuadra’s two predecessors in the presidency of the appeals panel were prosecutors who have gone back to work for the Justice Ministry.

Guidance From Sandinistas

Critics of the tribunals say the two Sandinista presidents guide the other members in making biased judgments. None of the four non-lawyer members has graduated from high school, two of them belong to the Sandinista Front, another has applied to join and the fourth is a member of the Sandinista Youth organization. Three are members of the Sandinista militias or reserves.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said in its 1982-83 annual report that the tribunal members are closely linked to “the political enemies of the accused” and added, “As a result, their impartiality, fairness and independence of judgment are seriously compromised.”

Cuadra denied that the tribunals’ members bring a politically prejudiced view to their work. “We don’t do it with a spirit of vengeance,” he said, “but rather trying to apply revolutionary and popular justice.”

The non-lawyer members are “of the people,” he said, “ . . . not pro-Sandinista or anything.”

The oldest member, Roberto Solis, is a former carpenter with a sixth-grade education who was with the Sandinista underground in the 1979 insurrection. Solis, 53, joined the Sandinista Front soon after it came to power, and he became a zone leader in the Sandinista Defense Committees. His son is a conscript in the Sandinista army.

Solis said the people have a right to participate in the tribunals.

“We are the ones who suffered in our own flesh from the repression of the dictatorship and continue to suffer from the war,” he said. “So we the people take care of applying revolutionary justice. It isn’t a matter here of convicting someone who is innocent. It must be proved that he committed a crime.”

The General Directorate of State Security is helpful in that, Solis said, and added, “The technical level of State Security is tremendous, extremely good.”

The youngest member of the tribunals is Urania Villanueva, 25, who belongs to the Sandinista Youth and is a former company commander in the Popular Sandinista Militia as well as a former leader in the Sandinista Defense Committees. Her husband was killed in a contra attack in 1983 while he was coordinating volunteer coffee-pickers on a government farm.

Villanueva, who reached the 11th grade in school, worked as an admissions clerk in a public hospital before the government appointed her to the tribunal.

The other members are Domingo Matute, 35, and Luis Perez, 48. Matute is a former Health Ministry inspector with an eighth-grade education. Perez, who completed the fifth grade, had a pickup truck for hire.

Both were zone coordinators in the Sandinista Defense Committees. Matute, who served on active duty with a reserve unit in 1982 and 1983, is a member of the Sandinista Front. Perez is a militia member and an “aspirant” to full membership in the front.

Fanor Avendana, a lawyer who has represented about 40 defendants before the tribunals, said the special courts do the bidding of the Sandinista Front. “They are instruments of the party, that is what they are,” said Avendana, a member of the opposition Social Christian Party.

He said many of his clients have told him that they were deprived of food and sleep for days before being forced to sign false statements while in detention. “Not one has said that he signed voluntarily, not one of all those I have represented,” Avendana said. “A large number have told me they were beaten.”

Avendana also criticized the Law on the Maintenance of Order and Public Security, saying, “That decree is so broad it doesn’t say specifically what is a crime.”

The Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights said the tribunal cases that it reviewed for its report “typically involved nonviolent security crimes, such as conspiracy and taking steps to submit the nation to foreign domination.

“In such cases,” the committee went on, “the line between legitimate political activity and that which threatens national security cannot be drawn with any precision.”

Reynaldo Orozco, 25, an illiterate lathe operator, was arrested June 1 by State Security agents near his home in the city of Granada. In a statement bearing Orozco’s thumbprint as a signature, State Security said he admitted joining the contra underground, attending counterrevolutionary meetings, recruiting underground members and knowing about a plot to steal arms from a Sandinista militia battalion.

In an Oct. 28 deposition, however, Orozco said he had made no such admissions. He said his State Security interrogator did not read the statement to him before he put his thumbprint on it.

“He told me to put my thumb there because that was my release order, which I would get after six months,” Orozco said.

Carlos Saavedra, Orozco’s lawyer, said a decision is due after Christmas but added that he is not optimistic.

In cases before the Popular Anti-Somocista Tribunals, Saavedra said, he tells his clients, “You should know in advance that with the statement from State Security, you will be convicted.”