1990-2006 - Ortega's Wilderness Years
In October 1990, security guards working for Humberto Ortega, Daniel's brother and the former FSLN Army Commander, used automatic weapons to kill Jean-Paul Genie (age 16) when Genie tried to pass Humberto's convoy on what is now the Masaya Highway. The FSLN used its control of the judiciary and the police to cover up the crime, and no one was ever held accountable for Genie's murder.
Ortega was defeated by the coalition National Opposition Union (UNO), led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in national elections 1990. After the FSLN lost the election in 1990 but before it handed over power to Dona Violeta, Ortega supervised the theft of billions of dollars worth of land and state-owned companies that went to his immediate family, Humberto Ortega and other prominent Sandinistas. Other companies involved in transportation, lumber, sugar mills, and slaughterhouses nominally went to the FSLN, but effectively ended up in the hands of Ortega, his family, and their closest associates. He left office saying “We leave victorious because we Sandinistas have spilled blood and sweat not to cling to government posts, but to bring Latin America a little dignity, a little social justice."
In July 1991 he was appointed general secretary of the FSLN, for which he was again a candidate for president of the nation in the elections held in October 1996, being defeated by the conservative Arnoldo Aleman. He subsequently faded to the background of Nicaraguan politics for the next decade, but then returned from the ashes. Since losing power in 1990, Ortega continued to maintain his terrorist ties, and publicly admitted receiving money from the government of Libya and other dubious sources for his subsequent presidential campaigns.
In February 2004, William Hurtado, an FSLN militant and former member of the Sandinista state security apparatus, shot and killed journalist and radio personality Carlos Guadamuz in Managua. A former Sandinista himself, Guadamuz had broken with Daniel Ortega and used his radio program to criticize Ortega, "Nicho" Marenco, and other FSLN leaders on a wide range of issues, including Zoilamerica's rape allegations against Ortega. Although the involvement of Daniel Ortega and Nicho Marenco in the Guadamuz murder was never proven in court, the killing was carried out in classic FSLN assassination-style and removed a thorn in the side of both men at a time when Marenco was running for Mayor of Managua. The falling out between Guadamuz and the FSLN and his media attacks on Ortega and Marenco are a matter of public record, as is Guadamuz's complaint to the police that he believed the FSLN planned to murder him. It is also a known fact that Hurtado was a former member of the Sandinista State Security Directorate.
In September 2004, boxer Ricardo Mayorga allegedly raped a young woman in a Managua hotel. Sensing an opportunity to blackmail Mayorga, Ortega and the FSLN agreed to protect the boxer in the courts if he would give the party a large portion of his international boxing winnings and "advertise" for Daniel in public. Mayorga agreed, and an FSLN judge found him not guilty in December. Much of Mayorga,s winnings now reportedly go to Ortega, and when Mayorga fought in Chicago in August 2005, he dedicated the fight to Daniel, wore the FSLN colors, and flashed the number of the FSLN slot on the Nicaraguan electoral ballot ("casilla") to the international media.
On December 11, 2005, a vehicle owned by the FSLN struck another vehicle and killed two young men in the early morning hours. Eyewitnesses reported that the person driving the FSLN vehicle was Rafael Ortega, Daniel's son and the director of FSLN-owned Channel 4, but, in order to protect the Ortega family, the FSLN pulled a switch and claimed that another driver was behind the wheel. Police and Prosecutors, fearing Ortega's power, refused to investigate the switch, denying justice to the families of the two victims using familiar Sandinista cover-up methods. The trial in which the FSLN and its judges covered up the issue of the real driver is also a matter of public record.
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