By: Anti-Capitalist Alternative

State crime, cross-border terrorism and a brutal warning against organized exile

The murder of retired major Roberto Samcam Ruiz, committed on June 19 in Costa Rica, is not an isolated event. It is a premeditated political crime, executed within the framework of the Ortega-Murillo regime’s transnational persecution, with the clear objective of sowing fear among those who, from exile, continue to denounce and resist his dictatorship.

Roberto Samcam, an ex-combatant of the Sandinist Front and a critical referent for more than a decade, was shot 8 times by a hitman who pretended to be his neighbor. This attack, directed against a very important oppossing and political analyst who publicly denounced corruption, militarism and state repression, confirms the existence of an espionage and persecution machinery operating beyond the Nicaraguan borders. This is not a personal reckoning: this is State terrorism executed on foreign territory.

Samcam, like many historical Sandinist cadres who rebelled against Ortega’s betrayal, went into exile in 2018 after the brutal repression of the popular insurrection. Since then, his voice had not been silenced. He denounced the entering of Ortega into military structures, publicly maintained his support for the rebellion of Jinotepe and Carazo, and participated in the articulation of the Patriotic Group of Retired Military Personnel. He was a political target of the regime. His death has clear perpetrators: the criminal state of Nicaragua and its intelligence and hit network that operates from its embassies and consulates.

From Alternativa Anticapitalista, Nicaraguan section of the International Socialist League, we denounce the dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo as the intellectual authors of this political crime. We also denounce the passive complicity of the Costa Rican State, whose indifference to the multiple allegations of persecution, espionage and attacks — such as those suffered by Joao Maldonado or the murder of Rodolfo “Piel” Rojas — makes it responsible by omission for the risks faced by exiles and refugees. As we well documented in the Final Report of the International Commission for the Life and Freedom of all political prisoners in Nicaragua that we promoted in 2022.

The dictatorship is no longer based on legitimacy, but fear. Their repression has entered a new phase: that of selective hunting outside the country, seeking to neutralize the active opposition in exile. Imprisonment, torture or exile is not enough for them. Now they appeal to murder. But what they don’t understand is that fear doesn’t paralyze us: it organizes us.

We remember Samcam as a defender of human rights, as a militant with whom we had political differences, but shared the direct struggle against a criminal dictatorship. Faced with the attempt to silence him, we answer with more organization, more unity, more internationalism.

We also reject the political opportunism of governments such as that of Rodrigo Chaves or the US State Department, which condemn with one hand while with the other they finance and legitimize other dictatorships or repressive apparatuses in Latin America. There is no good dictatorship and no acceptable repressor. Ortega, Maduro and Díaz-Canel are part of the same network of authoritarianism that uses anti-imperialist rhetoric to hide state capitalism, the enrichment of its leaders and the systematic violation of human rights.

In the face of this criminal offensive, we urgently call for strengthening unity in exile, deepening protection networks for human rights defenders and activists, and building an internationalist, militant and popular response against repression.

We have launched a joint international campaign with comrades from Venezuela and Cuba, for the freedom of all political prisoners and against repression in our countries. We propose the creation of an Independent International Commission to investigate all these crimes and prepare the basis for a Tribunal of the peoples, where ethical and political judgment serves as a precedent for real justice.

We invite you to join this campaign and let’s organize the response to the dictatorship by signing the International Manifesto.

For an International Movement against repression and for the freedom of all political prisoners.

Because only the people save the people. Out with Ortega-Murillo. Trial and punishment of those responsible for crimes against humanity and their accomplices.