A controversial turn in Ortega’s inner circle

The Nicaraguan army announced on Sunday the arrest of a man accused of planning a weapons theft, but opposition media in exile claimed he was an adviser to disgraced President Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan armed forces said in a press release that “citizen Stedman Fagot Müller was arrested” on Saturday in the indigenous town of Waspán in Nicaragua's North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region.

An army “patrol” received information about “plans prepared by citizen Stedman Fagot Müller to carry out activities outside the law.” The statement indicated involvement in “drug trafficking and organized crime from Honduras,” in a plan to “steal organic weapons from the facility.”

It added that the plan was to seize weapons from “military posts along the Coco River.” The detainee “has been handed over to the National Police for the relevant investigation,” the statement said. Meanwhile, Nicaraguan opposition website 100% Noticias, which is published in Costa Rica, said Müller is an “indigenous leader and former guerrilla” who currently holds the position of “advisor on policies toward indigenous peoples” in the Sandinista government.

The newspaper noted that in an interview on Friday, Müller called for “urgent measures to expel the invading settlers” in the Caribbean region and “blamed local authorities for land trading and accused Daniel Ortega and [the vice president and wife of the president] Rosario Murillo of violence and corruption” in the region.

A note published on August 16 on Nicaragua's pro-government website El 19 Digital highlighted that Muller, along with 16 others, was confirmed in his role as “presidential adviser with the rank of minister.” The arrest came nearly a month and a half after Commissioner General Marcos Alberto Acuña Avilés, the head of Ortega's security service, was “dishonorably” discharged for “insubordination” and other serious charges.

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