Nicaragua Frees 100 Prisoners to Uphold Pact

This nation began what it hopes will be an era of postwar reconciliation Sunday as 100 anti-Sandinista prisoners went home in the first act of amnesty under a preliminary peace agreement.

In a ceremony at Zona Franca Prison, the director of Nicaragua’s penal system, Alvaro Guzman, called the names of 99 men and one woman jailed for being Contra soldiers, opposition party activists, draft resisters or peasant farmers who fed armed rebels crossing their land.

One by one, as in a hurried commencement exercise, they stepped forward in alphabetical order to a table in the middle of a prison workshop. There they received safe-conduct certificates, officially erasing any record of crimes they were accused of committing against the Sandinista revolution.

“To be free is to live again!” exclaimed Juan Rosales Torrez, a 30-year-old farmer who said he joined the Contras to avoid forced recruitment by the Sandinista army.

“Let’s see how the Sandinistas behave now,” he said after five years in prison. “If they continue harassing and threatening, the Contras will return. But if this peace agreement works and they leave me alone, I can go back to the land and live in peace.”

The government invited foreign diplomats and journalists to the ceremony to show its readiness to comply fully with the accord it signed with Contra leaders Wednesday night. The agreement calls for a truce through May and new negotiations on disarmament of the rebel forces.

Difficult, Divisive Step

At the same time, Sandinista officials said the decision to pardon their enemies--those who resisted their armed takeover of Nicaragua and then fought to oust them--was the most difficult and divisive step taken in eight months of peace efforts.

“For many this is a dramatic and painful decision,” Interior Minister Tomas Borge told the prisoners, alluding to opposition by mothers of dead Sandinista combatants. “But like it or not, this could mean the beginning of the end to the war.”

By government count, the amnesty agreement will benefit 3,310 prisoners. The 100 freed Sunday were among 1,473 serving prison terms of up to 30 years for aiding the Contras during six years of war.

The remaining 1,834 prisoners are former National Guardsmen who fought to defend the Somoza family dictatorship against a popular insurrection that swept the Sandinistas into power in July, 1979.

Talks Due Today

Under the cease-fire agreement signed in Sapoa, Nicaragua, half the Contra prisoners are to be released as rebel troops start moving into cease-fire zones that will be drawn in follow-up negotiations starting today.

All remaining political prisoners, except those former National Guardsmen found guilty of what the government terms “genocide or horrendous crimes,” are to go free after the signing of a definitive cease-fire accord that sets a deadline for the rebels’ disarmament.

The most prominent prisoner freed Sunday was Roberto Amador Narvaez, a Contra pilot shot down Oct. 3, 1983, on a gun-running flight. Officials said that Contra negotiators last week specifically requested his release.

Beatings Reported

Asked what he would do now, Amador said: “I am a Contra. I have to do what (the rebel leaders) tell me to do.” But he added: “I don’t want any more people dying on this side or that side. And I don’t want more people in jail.”

Several prisoners said they had been beaten under interrogation by state security agents. One such victim, Jose Andres Marenco, 46, said he was sentenced in 1985 to 12 years in prison “only because the Contras passed my farm, asked for some food and I gave it.”

Most of the 100 prisoners were freed at the request of opposition political parties. Fourteen belonged to a faction of the Liberal Independent Party in the town of Trinidad. They said they were arrested for urging voters in 1984 to boycott the national elections won by the Sandinistas.

Opposition leaders attended the prison ceremony to greet freed members of their parties and encourage them to remain politically active.

“This is an important step toward ending the violence, but we have to wait to make a final evaluation,” said Erick Ramirez, president of the Social Christian Party.

‘Social Peace’ Necessary

Eduardo Coronado, an Independent Liberal leader, said there can be no reconciliation “if these prisoners are always looked upon as Contras, if their children are harassed.”

“If social peace is not established, it could set off new sparks of war,” Coronado added.

The prisoner release was begun on Palm Sunday at the request of Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, an observer at last week’s peace talks, as a gesture of respect for the country’s Roman Catholic tradition.

In his Sunday homily, the cleric urged Nicaraguans to pray not only for the success of the cease-fire but for “an authentic peace, a peace that brings fraternity, justice and respect for human rights.”

War Claims 25,000 Lives

More than 25,000 Nicaraguans are estimated to have died on both sides in the Contra war. Many others were killed in the 1978-79 insurrection against dictator Anastasio Somoza.

The Sandinistas first committed themselves to amnesty plus freedom and “total political pluralism” last August by signing an agreement with four other Central American nations on the steps each would take to end the region’s guerrilla wars.

Rank-and-file Sandinistas grimaced when La Prensa, the virulent opposition newspaper, reopened last October and the government, a month later, abandoned its long-stated policy of refusing to negotiate with the Contras.

Furor Over Amnesty

But when President Daniel Ortega hinted last fall that he would comply with his amnesty commitment, he provoked a national controversy.

A Sandinista organization called Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs mobilized thousands of women against total amnesty. Carrying photographs of their sons who died fighting, they held rallies and marches to demand that the killers be kept behind bars.

The government reached a compromise position in November. It pardoned and freed 985 political prisoners that month and vowed to keep the rest in jail until the rebels laid down their arms.

Ortega recalled Saturday that when he toured Managua neighborhoods that month, he was challenged over the prisoner release. He said he heard similar criticism of the cease-fire accord in a closed meeting Friday of Sandinista party activists.

“I had to make a very great effort to explain,” he told reporters. “I told them that what we are trying to do here is to end the war without ending the revolution. I asked them: ‘What is better, to free a few prisoners or expose ourselves to new fighting and the deaths of more Nicaraguans?’ ”

Contra Demands Rejected

In last week’s negotiations, the Sandinistas rejected Contra demands that all prisoners be freed before the truce took effect. Then the two sides reached a compromise to free the prisoners in stages.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission was assigned to review the cases of former national guardsmen to determine which ones committed atrocities that cannot be pardoned.

Freeing former guardsmen is a sensitive issue because many Sandinistas equate it with pardoning the repressive rule of the Somoza-family dynasty.

Before ratifying amnesty provisions of the peace accord, the Sandinista-dominated National Assembly aired the issue in a lively debate Saturday.

“Peace for what?” declared Isidro Tellez, one of two assemblymen who voted no. “So that the Somocistas can come back, so that the criminals can return to normal lives?”

Federico Lopez, a Sandinista legislator argued that the guardsmen to be pardoned were also victims of a repressive system. “To pardon them is not to pardon the old system. That would be to deny the existence of the revolution, but that is not what we are doing.”

The Sandinista president of the Assembly, Carlos Nunez, got in the last word. To renege on the government’s amnesty commitment, he argued, “will give the Reagan Administration new arguments to sabotage the peace agreement.”