DRUGS-NICARAGUA: Aleman Spattered in Narco-Jet Scandal

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Roberto Fonseca

MANAGUA, May 15 1998 (IPS) - Nicaraguan courts locked up seven people linked to the scandal of the cocaine-saturated presidential jet, but could not dispell suspicions that high-ranking officials, including President Arnoldo Aleman, were involved.

Judge Martha Quezada sent former assistant director of Civil Aeronautics, Alvaro Miranda, and his boss of the time, Mario Rivas Montealegre, to prison Thursday for crimes including drug trafficking, the falsification of documents and air piracy.

She also ordered the imprisonment of a secretary, a chauffer and two commercial pilots, as well as the Cuban-US pilot, Jose Francisco Guasch Rodriguez, who stole the plane from the airport at Fort Lauderdale in the United States on December 15, 1997.

“This is a political verdict,” said Jose Antonio Tijerino, the lawyer defending Alvaro Miranda.

“With this verdict, other people’s responsibilities have been passed on. The Attorney General’s Office should persue the true criminals and not the innocent,” added Tijerino.

The stolen vessel, worth more than two million dollars, arrived in Nicaragua on December 24, 1997, and remained in the country under the official classification of “presidential aeroplane,” thus avoiding the payment of more than a million dollars in taxes.

Quezada mentioned in the verdict, that according to technical evidence, the aeroplane was saturated with cocaine, showing large quantities of the drug had been moved in the vehicle.

During the early stages of the court case, President Aleman said Tuesday he would testify before Judge Quezada as the “offended party” not rather than as a witness, setting nerves a tingling in the political sphere.

In his declaration, made behind closed doors, Aleman said he had only travelled in the jet on two occasions, the first time, to attend the investiture of Honduran president, Carlos Flores, and then to participate in a presidential summit in El Salvador.

The leader emphatically denied having trafficked drugs on the plane on these occasions, calling on the US Drug Enforcement Agency to help in the investigations.

Other high ranking officials, including Vice President Enrique Bolanos, Transport and Construction Minister Edgard Quintana and Tourism Minister Pedro Joaquin Chamorro had also travelled in the stolen plane.

Guasch had offered the Nicaraguan government ten hours of free flights, and hence the plane gained the title of “presidential jet.”

“The sentence is not set in the law, it is shameful for the Nicaraguan Judicial Power,” said Juan Bautista, another of the defending lawyers.

“Lower ranking officials are shouldering the blame and the white collar criminals are walking free,” he added.

However, Quezada’s verdict left the way open for future investigations into the part played by the transport minister, the customs director and head of the imports department, who must have been aware of the planes entry into the country.

Hours after the verdict was was passed, groups of supporters of the opposition Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), demonstrating in support of doctors’ pay claims in Managua, took the opportunity to criticise the verdict of this “scandal of the year.”

Meanwhile, the FSLN parliamentary bloc, the second largest, demanded more in depth investigations Thursday, no matter who was involved.

At the same time, they called on Parliament to authorise the Antidrugs Commission to carry out a parallel investigation to the narcojet.

However, the parliamentary directing committee, mostly government supporters, refused to grant authorisation, as the Antidrugs Commission is dominated by the Sandinistas.

The scandal has striken government credibility both at home and abroad, following hot on the heels of other damaging corruption scandals.

According to the latest CID-Gallup poll, carried out on April 20 to 25, and released this week, 42.7 percent of Nicaraguans are convinced anyone working in business needs to pull strings in government if they want to close deals.

Furthermore, this has led to fewer people believing the goverment is doing either “a lot” or indeed “anything” to combat public corruption, falling from 49 to 38 percent over the last eight months.