Puerta de la Montaña pastors and co-workers were falsely accused of money laundering and sentenced to heavy jail penalties.
by Massimo Introvigne
While the calvary of the Catholic Church persecuted by the regime of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is well-known, Protestant communities are not faring better. They are often accused by the government of being nests of “American spies” and severely repressed.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has ruled against Nicaragua in a decision dated April 21, 2024, whose full text has now been published.
The case concerned Puerta de la Montaña, the Nicaraguan branch of an American organization training Protestant ministers and managing their evangelistic activities. On December 18, 2023, the Nicaraguan police raided Puerta de la Montaña and arrested eleven of its leaders, accused of money laundering.
On December 20, 2023, the organization was legally dissolved and banned. On March 19, 2024, the defendants were sentenced to jail penalties ranging from twelve to fifteen years in addition to million-dollar fines.
The defendants complained that evidence of money laundering was non-existent and that they were detained in inhuman conditions putting their life at risk, including Marisela de Fátima Mejía Ruiz, a young mother who was arrested when she had just given birth to her second son.
The Commission ordered Nicaragua to “adopt the necessary measures to protect the rights to life, personal integrity and the health of the eleven religious leaders,” to allow them full access to their lawyers, and to report to the Commission on the circumstances of the case.
Alliance Defending Freedom International raised the case with the Commission. It noted that while not a ruling on the merits, the Commission’s decision does chastise Nicaragua for its cavalier use of “sham trials” to repress religious organizations.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
