Nicaragua: Mysterious Firing of Immigration Director

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

NICARAGUA: 

STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUND FIRING OF IMMIGRATION DIRECTOR

by Alejandro Gomes
Prensa Latina

MANAGUA, Jan 19 (PL) Alleged links with drug traffickers, a cut in official
support and possible interference by the United States seem to be the
factors related to the firing of Nicaraguan Immigration and Naturalization
director, Jose Rivas.

In a statement to the press, Rivas opened a Pandora's Box and now needs many
explanations to close it. Even when that happens, doubts and suspicious will
remain unanswered.

The now former director stated that the decision taken by Nicaraguan
President Arnaldo Aleman was due to a US recommendation based on diverse
reports against Rivas addressed to the Nicaraguan State Department by the US
consul Celio Sandate.

According to those reports, Rivas is allegedly linked with the drug
trafficking and smuggling, If these allegations are true, he will have to
face the court.

However, the National Police confirmed that none of its branches possesses
information on those alleged links.  Due to the possibility of the crimes,
Sandate cancelled Rivas' visa to the US.  Rivas noted the consul had not
given him the right of defense.

The former Nicaraguan officer asserted that Sandate's attitude is due to
clashes they had, when the former did not submit to the consul's intentions
to command Rivas' position.

He recalled that in various opportunities, the US consul ordered Him to an
extreme, even personally calling the Immigration delegate at the airport to
order the apprehension of a certain family or person.

Rivas also mentioned that Sandate links him with the case of the Nicaraguan
pilot Pedro Irving Guillen Merlo who together with international drug
dealers kidnapped a helicopter in Mexico, and landing at the Nicaraguan
Atlantic coast last year. He also charges Rivas with issuing a fake passport
in the name of the late Fabio de Jesus Pena Perez to the Colombian drug
trafficker Jorge Camilo Henao Rivera, brother-in-law of Pablo Escobar's
widower and related to Arcangel de Jesus Henao-Montoya, chief of Valle de
Cauca cartel in northern Colombia.

Local experts interviewed by Prensa Latina asserted that "the humiliation
Rivas is suffering is another example of US interference and of President
Aleman's complacent attitude." GRS/RA

(c) 2001 Prensa Latina, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. 
 
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