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Nicaragua seizes Jesuit university / Photo: © AFP
NYSE - LSE
Nicaragua seizes Jesuit university
A Jesuit university in Nicaragua said Wednesday it is suspending classes and all other activities after the leftist government announced the seizure of all its assets, accusing the school of terrorism.
The Central American University in Managua said the punishment stems from unfounded reports that it "operated as a terrorism center, organizing delinquent groups" during anti-government protests in 2018 that left more than 300 people dead.
The government's National University Council said it was working to keep classes going at the Jesuit school.
Nicaragua is led by President Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla leader who toppled a US-backed right-wing regime in the 1970s and ruled for more than a decade.
But since returning to power in 2007, Ortega has engaged in increasingly authoritarian practices, exiling or jailing dissidents and rivals, quashing presidential term limits and seizing control of all branches of the state.
His relations with the Vatican are also tense. The Vatican's embassy in Nicaragua was closed earlier this year after Pope Francis in an interview referred to Ortega's government as a dictatorship.
The jailed Nicaraguan Catholic bishop Rolando Alvarez was released in July but then re-arrested after refusing to leave the country.
Alvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison in February after refusing to board a US-bound plane carrying 222 political prisoners into exile.
N. Lebedew--BTZ
