Will Sandinistas Face Justice?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 26, 1999 | by J. Michael Waller

Former Sandinista leaders in Nicaragua fear that they might be brought to trial for their alleged atrocities during the era that they held the country by the throat.

The arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London for trial in Spain for the deaths and disappearances of communists during his 17-year rule is coming back to haunt the international left. In Nicaragua, where the party faithful gear up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution on July 19, some top Sandinistas are looking at Pinochet and wondering if they're next.

Chief among them is Lenin Cerna, the 52-year-old former director of the notorious General Directorate for State Security, or DGSE, that tortured and murdered thousands between 1979 and 1990. Since retiring in April, Cerna has waged a preemptive strike against critics who say he should be held accountable for his crimes during a decade of violent repressions and bloody civil war.

Human-rights organizations have compiled thousands of cases that could be used against Cerna and his comrades in a trial or before an international tribunal. Allegations include widespread torture, kidnapping, rape, mutilation and murder. "We have 14,000 cases," Nicaraguan Permanent Human Rights Commission chief Lino Hernandez tells Insight. "We have said if people came to us, we would help them and even give evidence to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

"When we see so much evidence of so many crimes, disappearances and summary executions of Nicaraguan people, crimes in which ex-colonel Cerna directly participated," continues Hernandez, "we have to think that some day there will be justice." Hernandez is pushing for a Truth Commission modeled after those in Argentina, Chile, E1 Salvador and South Africa to document human-rights violations and identify the perpetrators.

Cerna reacts to such talk with threats. "They underestimate our ability to respond" he tells the Sandinista-controlled El Nuevo Diario newspaper, reminding the public that his forces are not "defeated soldiers." Nicaraguans have learned to take such words seriously. Elsewhere, Cerna has threatened armed mob violence against the government if he is brought to trial.

The former secret-police chief is well-positioned to make good on his threats. As part of the 1990 deal allowing freely elected President Violeta Chamorro to take office, the Sandinistas forced the incoming democratic government to grant immunity to the DGSE and the army, which absorbed the secret-police apparatus. DGSE archives documenting its activities, including torture sessions, forced confessions and lists of people to be abducted and murdered, were shipped to Cuba. Before stepping down, the Sandinistas distributed hundreds of thousands of military weapons to party loyalists nationwide.

The present government of President Arnoldo Aleman, another Sandinista foe, is almost powerless against any threatened mob action. The heavily politicized army, still in Marxist hands, has hinted it will allow armed Sandinista mobs to wreak havoc by refusing to call out troops to quell disturbances.

As his name suggests, Lenin Cerna is from a family of hard-core Communists. His father was a Salvadoran follower of Josef Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s. Cerna's sister, Krupskaia, was named to honor Lenin's wife. His brother is named Engels, for Marx's benefactor Friedrich Engels.

As DGSE chief, Cerna worked closely with East German and Cuban advisers to set up a ruthless secret-police system that spied on and hunted down political opponents. He is believed to be the intellectual author of the 1980 murder of coffee-growers union leader Jorge Salazar, the assassinations of evangelical Christian pastors, the persecution of the Catholic Church and the village-to-village abductions and killings of peasants resisting collectivization of their land.

Cerna's DGSE, an arm of the interior ministry, summarily arrested people, denying them the right to legal counsel, habeas corpus or appeal and subjected them to torture and even execution. The DGSE could arrest without charges, but common "crimes" for which arrests were made included selling grain on the open market, selling foodstuffs without authorization, expressing opinions against the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, criticizing the government, refusing to join the FSLN party-controlled militia, investigating or reporting Sandinista abuses of power, organizing nonviolent opposition, refusing to spy on friends and neighbors, providing legal defense for political prisoners and feeding or otherwise assisting members of resistance groups. A State Department report cited "the DGSE's ability to arrest anyone and to hold prisoners under abominable conditions until their will is broken or they die."

Even some Sandinistas believe enough evidence exists to put Cerna on trial. "Do you see any possibility that there could be a national or international human-rights campaign against the FSLN for alleged summary executions, mass graves and disappearances in the 1980s?" asked the Sandinistas' El Nuevo Diario recently. "Would it be possible that you or another top FSLN official could be surprised by a sudden judgment during a trip abroad, and be arrested?"