Expert group: “Purge” of the legal profession underway in Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan government has revoked the licenses of around 2,000 lawyers, in what it describes as a “purge of the profession”. The aim, according to the UN, is to get rid of the last vestiges of the country’s democratic checks and balances, AFP reports, among others.
According to the UN Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua, the lawyers were given no advance warning, the government did not refer to any legal basis for the decision and no official explanation was published.
“Most of them only found out about it when they tried to enter the courthouse,” the group wrote in a statement.
– The silent purge of the legal profession is another nail in the coffin for the integrity of the justice system in Nicaragua. First they took the judges, now they are taking the lawyers, says Reed Brody, who is one of the experts in the group.
Lawyer: “A way to exercise totalitarian control over the profession”
Juan Diego Barberena, a Nicaraguan lawyer who has lived in exile in Costa Rica since 2022, is one of around 2,000 lawyers who have lost their law licenses without warning or explanation, he tells Al Jazeera.
It was when Barberena tried to look up his accreditation in Nicaragua’s database that he discovered that his name and license number had been deleted from the system.
“This is a way to exercise totalitarian control over the legal profession. It means that the dictatorship can decide who practices it and who does not,” he says.
The move has been condemned by the UN panel of experts, which, among other things, calls it a “nail in the coffin for the integrity of the justice system
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