Costa Rica arrests 4 over killing in exile of Nicaraguan opposition figure
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Costa Rican authorities said Friday they had arrested four people in connection with the killing in June of a retired Nicaraguan military officer and outspoken critic of President Daniel Ortega.
Roberto Samcam, 67, was shot dead on the morning of June 19 when police said a man entered his condominium complex in the northeast of the Costa Rican capital, San Jose.
The retired major was shot multiple times with a 9mm pistol, according to Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigations agency. The gunman escaped.
Samcam had been living in exile since July 2018 when paramilitaries assaulted his home in Nicaragua.
The agency said Friday its agents carried out three raids in which they captured three people in an area on the north side of San Jose. Another suspect was arrested Thursday in the city of Cañas in Guanacaste province, west of the capital.
Agency director Randall Zúñiga said one of those arrested was allegedly an intermediary that organized the others. Another was the alleged 20-year-old gunman and a third was a driver.
The intermediary’s girlfriend was also in custody.
Zúñiga said authorities had still not determined who masterminded the killing or if there was any involvement to anyone outside Costa Rica.
He said that there were similarities between Samcam’s killing and an attempted homicide in 2024 of Joao Salgado, another Nicaraguan opposition figure. Salgado was shot several times, but survived and accused a cell of Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front of responsibility.
In both cases, the killers used a driver from the same neighborhood and attacks were carried out in a “clumsy way,” Zúñiga said.
Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have sought refuge in Costa Rica since Ortega cracked down on widespread protests in 2018.
In 2020, Samcam served as an expert for the Court of Conscience, organized by Costa Rica’s Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, to collect testimony of those who suffered torture and other abuses at the hands of the Nicaraguan government.
He published a book in 2022 — Ortega: El calvario de Nicaragua’ (Ortega: Nicaragua’s torment) — and last year published another text describing in detail how he watched Ortega build a dictatorship.
Since crushing the 2018 protests, Nicaragua’s government has systematically pursued any voice of opposition. The government has closed hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and persecuted religious groups, including the Catholic church.
By JAVIER CORDOBA
Associated Press
