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The Supreme Court of Justice in Nicaragua remains intervened and paralyzed by the dictatorship, two years after the “humiliating” removal of its president, Alba Luz Ramos, and a massive purge that “is still ongoing.” In this “annihilated” court, there are inoperative departments, magistrates who receive salaries but do not sign anything without authorization from the “Co-Presidency,” and a constant fear of further dismissals, interrogations, and jail orders. All of these are conditions that Nicaraguan jurists and analysts in exile see as “showing no signs of renewal.”
“There is a total paralysis of the CSJ (…) The magistrates barely go to their offices and are not allowed to sign rulings without approval from El Carmen,” a source linked to the Court told CONFIDENCIAL.
Several sources also confirmed that the Supreme Court’s chambers are not holding sessions, and that the National Council for Judicial Administration and Career is not meeting either.
“It is a failed institution and almost completely inoperative,” the source added.
Two years with an “acting president”
After more than three decades as a magistrate of the Judiciary, Alba Luz Ramos was removed from her office during a police operation ordered by Rosario Murillo on October 24, 2023.
Following the fall of the CSJ president, Vice President Marvin Aguilar was identified as the “acting president,” in what seemed like an immediate promotion. However, Aguilar was never formally elevated and “also fell from favor,” although after a brief period of absence he reappeared—albeit sidelined—in some official activities.
“He is a decorative figure, with no role beyond attending public events and, like the other magistrates, signing any document or ruling directed from El Carmen,” a judicial source said.
Another jurist familiar with the Court’s situation told CONFIDENCIAL that “Marvin Aguilar tried to exercise his power and assemble a group of followers he appointed, but with the experience Alba Luz had accumulated, they no longer allowed anyone to accumulate that much power.”
“Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega—because I don’t see them acting separately—do not allow anyone to have a concentration of power that could challenge them in the future,” added the jurist.
The source linked to the CSJ maintains that Aguilar, “like the rest of the magistrates, currently has no capacity for independent action, decision, or maneuvering, unlike in 2023,” when he was the powerful political secretary of the FSLN in the Judiciary and a channel for transmitting orders from El Carmen, in coordination with Néstor Moncada Lau, presidential security advisor, who was also caught up in Murillo’s “purge.”
Empty Seats and Magistrates Who Keep Collecting Salaries
By the end of 2023, the CSJ had seven of its 16 seats vacant, including that of the ousted magistrate president and six positions left empty for several years due to deaths and resignations.
The list later grew with the addition of magistrate Gerardo Arce Castaño, brother of the commander of the National Directorate of the Sandinista Front in the 1980s and presidential economic advisor Bayardo Arce, who has been imprisoned since late July 2025.
However, the reform to the Political Constitution, approved by orders of Ortega and Murillo between late 2024 and early 2025, reduced the number of CSJ magistrates from 16 to 10.
Currently, there are eight “active” magistrates: Marvin Aguilar; Juana Méndez (reinstated after a brief resignation in an attempt to preside over the Central American Court of Justice); Armando Juárez López; Armengol Cuadra; and Ellen Joy Lewin Downs. Additionally, Yadira Centeno, Manuel Martínez, and Virgilio Gurdián, who were temporarily sidelined during the 2023 intervention, now attend the CSJ sporadically, with their salaries intact.
Joining them is Patricia Delgado Sáenz, wife of deputy and president of the Sandinista Front caucus in the National Assembly, Edwin Castro. Delgado, in her capacity as a substitute judge, has the authority to replace magistrates and serves as an “acting magistrate,” although she has not been officially sworn in.
Proposals for the new magistrates have been awaited since November 2023, before the “Chamuca” Constitution reduced the number of seats. However, the list continues to be delayed due to the ongoing power struggle between the dictatorial couple, now proclaimed as “co-presidents.”
“Ortega and Murillo are fully sharing control over the Judiciary, which has ceased to be under Ortega’s exclusive oversight (…) It could be said that, as of today, Murillo has much greater control over the Court and the tribunals,” the source linked to the CSJ commented.
Murillo’s Intervention Keeps the CSJ Paralyzed
The “approval” from El Carmen—the residence and office of Ortega and Murillo—reaches the magistrates through the new administrative secretary-general and political secretary of the FSLN in the Judiciary, Róger Martínez.
Additionally, in a new restructuring of officials led by Fidel Moreno, 60 judges without a judicial career were appointed in July 2024. Moreno serves as the FSLN’s organization secretary, acting under Murillo’s orders.
The source linked to the CSJ commented that “all of this severely affects the Court and the ‘judicial body’ as a whole, because it has become an almost completely inoperative institution.”
Constitutional lawyer Juan Diego Barberena, who has been following this crisis, notes that “what the regime needs is to have an inoperative judicial system, and for the Supreme Court of Justice, as the main judicial body that the State theoretically has, to lack the capacity even to convene chambers to issue minimal, purely procedural rulings.”
The judicial source adds that this paralysis undermines “the constitutional right to Effective Judicial Protection, access to justice, and the resolution of cases within the timeframes established by law, especially those brought before the Court,” including Criminal and Civil Cassation, Administrative Contentious Appeals, Writs of Amparo, Constitutional Challenges, and others.
According to the specialized source, “the rates of delayed justice, which had been gradually decreasing between 2010 and 2017, are now at very high levels, not only in the CSJ but across all judicial instances” in Nicaragua.
Barberena also maintains that “there was no judicial independence, because it had already been effectively abolished by the Ortega-Murillo regime slightly before 2018, and later it was instrumentalized.”
Fewer Functions, Departments, and Budget
After Ramos was removed, Murillo accelerated her intervention in the Court, stripping the institution of functions, departments, and resources.
In October 2023, the National Assembly approved the Law on the Assignment of the National Registry System (SINARE), which ordered the transfer of the administration of all public registries from the Supreme Court of Justice to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR).
In January 2024, the dictatorship also eliminated the minimum 4% of the General State Budget that was legally allocated to the justice system. Months later, in April, it ordered the transfer of the Directorate for Alternative Conflict Resolution (Dirac) to the “super” PGR, later renamed the Attorney General’s Office of Justice, under the direct control of the “Co-Presidency,” led by Wendy Morales, another loyal appointee of Murillo.
“In the transition stage from Daniel Ortega to the dynastic succession, they cannot tolerate any alternative centers of power, no matter how small,” a Nicaraguan jurist in exile told CONFIDENCIAL.
The final blow was reducing the Judiciary to a mere “organ” of the State in the new “Chamuca” Constitution.
For lawyer Barberena, “these were the first steps to guarantee the dynastic succession on the political level.”
He adds, “They have not appointed a new president of the Supreme Court of Justice because what the Ortega-Murillo regime needs—now on a more political level, after securing the succession legally through the approval of the Chamuca Constitution—is to have an inoperative judicial body.”
The Purge of Public Employees Has Not Stopped
The purge within the judicial apparatus has a long history. In October 2021, magistrate Gerardo Rodríguez Olivas, president of the Managua Court of Appeals (TAM), was dismissed. For years, Rodríguez had been a loyal operative of the regime, but he lost his position for processing a writ of amparo regarding the revocation of legal status of the Citizens for Liberty party (CXL).
In 2022, the following officials also “fell”:
- Zacarías Duarte, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, for attending a congress without the dictatorship’s permission in May 2022.
- Magistrate and president of the Civil and Family Chamber, Ileana Pérez, involved in several corruption scandals.
- Roberto Larios, spokesperson and director general of the Communications Department, accused of “treason to the homeland,” imprisoned and exiled in 2023.
- Katia Jaentschke Acevedo, director of international relations and daughter of the current foreign minister Valdrack Jaentschke.
- Ruth Tapia Roa, director of protocol, dismissed despite her long tenure with the regime.
Between September 2022 and May 2023, around 120 workers were dismissed or forced to resign. Then, in September 2023, one month before Ramos’s removal, three Sandinista officials who coordinated the CSJ’s “troll farm” were dismissed: Berman Martínez, organization secretary of the Sandinista Front; Walter Sobalvarro, former leader of the Sandinista Youth in Managua and director of General Services at the Court; and Carlos Alberto López Tinoco, union leader.
These three operators were involved in spreading official propaganda and attacking opponents on social media from CSJ offices, although their dismissal was officially for disobeying orders from El Carmen.
One month after Ramos’s departure, the number of dismissed employees had risen to 900. The purges continued in 2024, with a new wave of dismissals bringing the total to 1,100 people. The purge extended to more political operators, despite their role in the national and transnational repression carried out by the dictatorship. Among them were:
- Octavio Rothschuh Andino, president of Chamber One of the Managua Court of Appeals (TAM), the same official who announced the exile of 222 former political prisoners on February 9, 2023.
- Luden Martín Quiroz García, head of the Ninth Criminal Trial Court of Managua, who sentenced nine political prisoners in 2022.
- Félix Ernesto Salmerón Moreno, judge of the Fifth Criminal Trial Court, who sentenced business leaders, presidential precandidates, and peasant leaders.
- Ernesto Leonel Rodríguez Mejía, president of the Managua Court of Appeals, who read the ruling that stripped 94 Nicaraguans of their nationality on February 15, 2023.
“The purge has not stopped, although its intensity had substantially decreased in the past year,” said the source linked to the CSJ. However, since October 2025, the purge has resumed at all levels and nationwide, including judges, judicial secretaries, administrative staff, drivers, and security guards. “Officials are dismissed without prior notice and without the legal benefits,” the source added.
The jurist who spoke with CONFIDENCIAL stated, “In a totalitarian state model, the purge is necessary to enforce submission through fear and terror, where no one feels secure in their position.”
