An imprisoned bishop has been filmed in prison in Nicaragua after concerns were raised about his sentencing and disappearance from public view last month.
After an international outcry about the sentencing of Bishop Rolando Jose Álvarez of Matagalpa on 10 February, Nicaraguan official media sources filmed him in La Modelo Prison last Saturday and broadcast a short interview.
They also allowed him a visit from his family, in a room with plants, sofas and a table.
“It was good to see him alive and apparently well,” a Nicaragua expert told The Tablet, but his interview was probably “manipulated”.
The video, produced by a media outlet sympathetic to Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua, contained the first images and statements of Bishop Álvarez, sentenced in February to 26 years in prison and accused of being a “traitor to the homeland”.
His whereabouts were unknown until last weekend. The incarceration of the outspoken critic of Nicaragua’s government was the latest move by President Daniel Ortega against the Catholic Church and all opposition.
After thanking the prison authorities for treating him well, the 56-year-old Bishop Álvarez joked about his current state.
“You see me well, healthy, and how do you see my face?” Wearing his prison uniform and visibly thinner, the Nicaraguan bishop talked about his “great inner strength” and thanked “the Blessed Virgin because today is the day of the Annunciation of the angel to the Mother”.
Commenting on the meeting with his brother and sister, Bishop Álvarez said that they had “talked, had a very tasty meal here with food kindly provided for us by the friends of the prison system”.
The bishop is being held in the Jorge Navarro prison in Tipitapa, known as La Modelo.
There have been complaints about human rights violations in this prison, such as overcrowding, a lack of medical attention and aggression by prison staff against inmates.
In February Bishop Álvarez refused the opportunity to be deported – along with 222 other political prisoners, including priests and seminarians – to the United States, preferring to stay with other prisoners who remain in Nicaraguan jails.
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