“Today I have been persecuted all day long by the Sandinista police, from the morning until this hour of the night and at all times, in all my movements during the day,” Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa said on May 19.

Daniel Ortega, a leader of the Marxist Sandinistas who overthrew the authoritarian regime of Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ruled Nicaragua from the 1979 Sandinista takeover until his loss in the 1990 presidential election. He returned to power in 2007.