A retired military officer from Nicaragua who later became a critic of President Daniel Ortega was shot dead in his exiled, sprawling condo in Costa Rica.
Roberto Samcam, 67, passed away on Thursday, raising questions about Nicaraguan dissidents’ safety, even if they reside abroad.
A suspect shot the retired major at least eight times before entering Samcam’s condominium building in San Jose at around 7:30 am local time (13:30 GMT).
The murder weapon was a 9mm pistol, according to Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Organization. Claudia Vargas, Samcam’s wife, claimed the suspect lied to be a deliveryman to gain access to her husband according to Reuters news agency.
The suspect allegedly fled on a motorcycle after firing a gun on Samcam before fleeing without a word. He is still at large.
Samcam left his country after taking part in the protests in 2018. They started as counterprotests against social security reforms and quickly grew into one of the biggest anti-government movements in the country’s history.
Nicaragua’s streets were flooded by countless people. Some even demanded the resignation of Ortega.
Ortega did ultimately halt the social security reforms, but he also responded to the protests with a police crackdown, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 355 people, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
More than 2, 000 people were injured, and 2, 000 were detained according to the IACHR, for “arbitrary detention.”
Ortega has continued to demand punishment for the protesters and organizations he compared to a “coup” in the months and years following the demonstrations.
Samcam was one of the critics who criticised Ortega’s use of paramilitary forces and military equipment to thwart the demonstrations. Both have been refuted by Ortega.
For instance, he compared Ortega to Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the final of the nearly 43-year-old Somoza family dictatorship, in a 2019 interview with Confidencial.
And Samcam published a book in the year 2022 called Ortega: El Calvario de Nicaragua, which roughly means Ortega: Nicaragua’s agony.
Ortega has long been accused of authoritarian tendencies and human rights violations. For instance, he seized hundreds of dissidents’ property in 2023 and stripped them of their citizenship, leaving them as essentially stateless.
Additionally, he has pushed for constitutional changes to strengthen both his and his wife’s, former vice president Rosario Murillo’s, position. Ortega serves as Ortega’s co-president, and she now leads.
Additionally, the changes give Ortega more authority to oversee all “legislative, judicial, electoral, control, and supervisory bodies,” giving him more authority to oversee virtually all government agencies.
Samcam was assisting in the investigation into some of Ortega’s alleged abuses from abroad.
He was appointed the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress’ (Cabinet of Conscience), a nonprofit headed by Oscar Arias, a Costa Rican president, in the fall of 2020.
In order to bring a legal action against the Nicaraguan president and his officials, Samcam as part of the group scoured the public’s testimony of abuses and torture committed under Ortega.
According to Samcam, “We are documenting each case so that it can be moved on to a trial, possibly before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.”
Samcam is not the only dissident from Nicaragua who has experienced an alleged assassination attempt while living abroad.
In addition to living in the capital of Costa Rica, Joao Maldonado, a student leader in the protests of 2018, has survived two similar attempts. He and his partner were seriously injured in the most recent incident, which occurred in January 2024.
