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🗳️ Chile’s primary, Ortega’s hitmen
Critics of Nicaragua’s regime are being killed while in exile. And polls show that Chile’s Communist Party could win the country’s left-wing primary.
Lucas Berti & Ignacio Portes
June 27, 2025
NICARAGUA
Is Daniel Ortega ordering the assassination of exiled critics?
Roberto Samcam's coffin, taken to a cemetery in San José, was draped with the flags of Nicaragua and Spain, the latter having granted him nationality in 2023. Photo: X/@lamesaredondan1
Unknown gunmen last week broke into the house of Roberto Samcam, an exiled Nicaraguan living in Costa Rica, and shot him eight times. They fled without stealing anything — a strong hint that this might have been a cold-blooded execution.
Samcam was a 66-year-old retired military officer and a harsh critic of President Daniel Ortega. He fled the country in 2018, as Ortega clamped down on a wave of student protests by killing over 300 civilians and irregularly arresting dozens, marking the country’s descent into an authoritarian family dynasty that would ban all forms of opposition…
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