Nicaraguan Army arrests advisor to President Daniel Ortega

Saint Joseph. The Nicaraguan Army announced the arrest of a man accused of planning a weapons robbery, but opposition media in exile claimed that he is an adviser to disgraced President Daniel Ortega.

The Nicaraguan Armed Forces said in a statement that “citizen Stedman Fagot Müller was detained” on Saturday in the indigenous town of Waspán, in the Autonomous Region of the North Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.

An Army “patrol” “became aware of information about plans prepared by citizen Stedman Fagot Müller to carry out illegal activities.”

The note pointed out complicity with “drug trafficking and organized crime originating in Honduras” to “steal the institution’s weapons.”

The statement added that the plan was to seize weapons from “military posts located on the banks of the Coco River.” The detainee “was handed over to the National Police for the corresponding investigations,” the statement said.

For its part, the Nicaraguan opposition website 100% Noticias, published in Costa Rica, said that Müller is an “indigenous leader and former guerrilla” and that he currently held the position of “Advisor for Policies towards Indigenous Peoples” in the Sandinista government.

The media noted that on Friday, Müller in an interview “called for urgent measures to expel invading settlers” in the Caribbean region and “held local authorities responsible for land trafficking and exonerated Daniel Ortega and [a la vicepresidenta y esposa del mandatario] Rosario Murillo of violence and corruption” in the area.

A note published on August 16 on Nicaragua’s official website, El 19 Digital, highlighted that Müller along with 16 other people were confirmed in their positions as “Advisors to the Presidency, with the rank of Ministers.”

The arrest occurred almost a month and a half after General Commissioner Marcos Alberto Acuña Avilés, head of Ortega’s escort, was dishonorably dismissed after being accused of “insubordination” and other serious charges.

According to opposition outlet El Confidencial, also published in San José, Acuña became head of the presidential escort when Ortega, who governed in the 1980s after the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza, returned to power in 2007 after elections.