Washington officials renewed their criticism of the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega earlier this week for "unjustly" putting Matagalpa Bishop Rolando Alvarez in prison for alleged treason, demanding the regime to free the prelate immediately and without conditions.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called on Ortega and his vice president, Rosario Murillo, to release Alvarez, who has spent over 500 days in La Modelo Tipitapa - one of Latin America's most notorious prisons. He added that the videos and photographs released by Managua only exacerbated concerns about his well-being.
Keeping Alvarez in Jail
The pronouncements came after the Ortega regime sentenced Alvarez to more than 26 years in prison, stripped him of his citizenship, and declared him a traitor last February for allegedly "undermining national integrity" and "propagation of false news."
The conviction came after the bishop refused to be exiled to the United States with four other priests and 222 other political prisoners who were expelled to the US as part of a prisoner exchange with the US State Department.
The regime also claimed late last year that they released an additional 12 priests in a separate deal with the Vatican.
Despite this, Alvarez chose to remain in Nicaragua in protest against the regime's crackdown on the Catholic Church in recent years. Another bishop named Isidoro Mora and several priests also remain in Nicaraguan captivity, according to EWTN.
Washington Accuses Ortega's Regime of Crimes Against Humanity
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom recently reported that the Nicaraguan government has shut down charities, stripped universities of funding and legal status, eliminated non-governmental organizations, and banned news media.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis - the Vatican's first Latin American pontiff - compared Alvarez's imprisonment to Hitler's Nazi regime and called out Ortega as "unstable."
US officials have long accused Ortega's administration of crimes against humanity for waging war against religious freedom and civil liberties. Both the Trump and Biden administrations and members of Congress passed measures to sanction financial lifelines to the Nicaraguan government.
However, Republican representative Chris Smith (NJ) told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration has not been doing enough to address Nicaragua's erosion of civil society and its diplomatic leanings toward China, Russia, and Iran, suggesting that the US needed to add more "concrete steps to punish the regime."
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