Ortega Says Sandinista Courts Will Try Captured American

President Daniel Ortega said Saturday that the American crewman captured after Nicaraguan troops shot down a plane flying supplies to the contras will be tried in a Sandinista court.

In his first public comment since Eugene Hasenfus, 45, was captured last week, he also angrily denounced what he called “direct participation” of the U.S. government in aiding the guerrillas, who oppose his leftist Sandinista regime.

Ortega, speaking at a town meeting broadcast by the government-run Voice of Nicaragua radio, said U.S. officials “stimulate terrorist actions such as this, but when people die they do not take responsibility for the action. . . . They just call them heroes.”

President Reagan and other U.S. officials have denied any government involvement in the flight.

Ortega said Hasenfus, of Marinette, Wis., “certainly will have to pay before the People’s Anti-Somocista Courts,” but he did not say what charges would be filed.

Other Sandinista officials have said Hasenfus could face up to 30 years in prison. The People’s Courts were formed after the Sandinista National Liberation Front came to power in July, 1979, ending 42 years of rule by the rightist, pro-American Somoza dynasty.

American officials will seek a second meeting with Hasenfus, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Saturday. U.S. Consul Donald Tyson was allowed to visit him for 10 minutes on Friday at an office of the secret police. Tyson has declined to comment on that meeting.

However, Nicaraguan government spokesman Manuel Espinoza said Hasenfus told Tyson that he needed fresh clothing, toothpaste and shaving gear. Hasenfus also said that he was being treated well but complained of a lack of sunlight in his cell, Espinoza said.