Refugees worry: Is Nicaragua assassinating government critics in Costa Rica?

By Frances Robles

Roberto Samcam Ruiz took security measures seriously.

A retired Nicaraguan army major who had spoken out against the Sandinista government, he fled to neighboring Costa Rica after his name started popping up on wanted posters.

When out in public in San José, the Costa Rican capital, he changed shirts to throw off any would-be followers. He rode in Ubers — never buses — and constantly warned other Nicaraguan anti-government activists living in Costa Rica to watch their backs.

“At one point, he became totally paranoid,” said Claudia Vargas, his wife of 25 years.

Samcam’s precautions were not enough.

On June 19, two assassins who had apparently staked him out for weeks stormed his condominium complex in San José and shot him eight times inside his home.

Samcam’s killing became at least the sixth time a Nicaraguan dissident was shot, abducted or killed in Costa Rica since hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans fled their country after deadly protests there in 2018.

Activists, human rights advocates and dozens of former Latin American presidents said Samcam’s killing strongly suggested that the government of Nicaragua is running sophisticated intelligence operations on foreign soil against its enemies. There have been no arrests so far.

The killing has the potential to disrupt diplomatic relations between two friendly, neighboring Central American countries that rely on each other for trade.

But Costa Rica’s president, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, apparently unwilling to antagonize an important trade partner and an increasingly authoritarian government, has said nothing on the matter, alarming exiles who had hoped for a more robust response.

The Costa Rican Ministry of Security referred questions about the killing to the president’s office. The president’s spokesperson referred questions back to the ministry.

With President Donald Trump ending the refugee program that resettled Nicaraguans in the United States, seeking U.S. asylum is no longer an option.

So the thousands of Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica who were forced out of their homeland are living in fear and wondering if they need to pack up and run a second time.

“We came here fleeing from a dictatorship and can’t be safe in the country that gave us refuge,” said Wilberto Miranda Aburto, a Nicaraguan journalist. “We are not safe in Costa Rica.”

Samcam’s death pointed a spotlight on Nicaragua’s co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who have tightened their grip on power. After Ortega took office in 2007, the couple have manipulated elections, courts and the legislature to solidify their hold over the country.

As protests grew, they accused opponents of plotting a coup, jailed them, forced them into exile, seized their properties and took away their Nicaraguan citizenship.

United Nations experts likened them to Nazis.

Murillo, who serves as the government’s spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment.

Samcam, 66, a member of the Sandinista party, broke with the party after he retired from the military and became a blogger, political analyst and radio host. He tried unsuccessfully to run for office in Jinotepe, a city in the Carazo department about an hour south of Managua, the capital, but elections were widely denounced as fraudulent.

In 2018, he was one of hundreds of thousands of people who participated in an enormous uprising against the Ortega-Murillo government.

The government ultimately shut down the protests nationwide with force, killing more than 300 people. Nearly 250,000 Nicaraguans have fled and have sought refugee protection in Costa Rica, said Juan Carlos Arce, a Nicaraguan human rights lawyer.

Now, Vargas finds herself rethinking all of the security measures her husband insisted on.

“I am going through all these phases, which I know are normal, of asking myself, ‘When Roberto asked about security, should I have paid more attention?’” she said. “This was a political motive to silence Roberto’s voice for being too powerful, too potent.”

Samcam became a critical voice after the 2018 protests, using his knowledge of military materiel to show that the armed forces — not the police — had conducted the crackdown.

Experts say the Ortegas were particularly furious at Samcam and other former Sandinistas whom they viewed as traitors for breaking from their ranks. And they were especially angry at those who helped organize the Carazo roadblocks.

“They put us on a list where they cataloged us as military objectives,” said Joao Maldonado, 35, also a former Sandinista from Carazo.

Gunmen in Costa Rica hunted Maldonado down twice.

His voice still slightly off from a bullet that landed in his jaw, Maldonado recounted how the first time, in 2021, he was driving when he was shot in the abdomen, twice in the left wrist, once in the right clavicle and once near his heart. As the bullets flew, he said he asked God to forgive his sins and said to himself, “Jesus Christ, I accept you as my Lord and savior.”

He survived.

Maldonado said he applied for refugee status through a U.S. State Department program, which Trump has since eliminated. Even under the Biden administration, the vetting took two years. After being accepted in 2023, he was targeted by gunmen again while running errands, 10 days before he was set to leave the country.

He was shot eight times, including once in the face. His girlfriend was struck in the spine and paralyzed.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Maldonado, who has since left Costa Rica, said in a video interview. “It is a reality: This is transnational persecution.”

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a prominent journalist — whose mother, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, a former president of Nicaragua, died only days before Samcam’s killing — said Costa Rica had a long history of offering refuge to politically persecuted people from Nicaragua. He lived there as a child when his family had to flee the Somoza dictatorship, so when his life was at risk, he never imagined going anyplace else.

“We trust that this is a country of peace, democracy and democratic institutions,” he said.

Asked if he was afraid, he quoted a line that his father, newspaper publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, frequently cited: “Each person is the master of their own fear.”

The elder Chamorro was killed in Managua in 1978.