MEXICO CITY.- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) held a public hearing for a high-profile and old case of feminicide in Nicaraguain which relatives of the victim accuse the State of that Central American country of negligence.
During the session, which lasted several hours, the court heard the testimony of Aída Luz González, mother of the deceased Dina Carrión González, who said that her daughter was murdered on April 3, 2010 by her husband, Juan Carlos Siles.
“I demand justice (…) Dina did not kill herself, my daughter was killed,” said the woman at the beginning of the public hearing in San José, Costa Rica, the seat of the hemispheric court, which for the first time agrees to examine a lawsuit against the Nicaraguan State for a case classified as femicide.
The violent death of Dina Carrión had a great impact at the time in Nicaragua, because Juan Carlos Siles, who still lives in that country with the couple’s only son, was declared not guilty. The Prosecutor’s Office argued that he could not be convicted because he was responsible for “protecting” the then minor.
Background of the crime
During the hearing, the court also heard testimony from Aída Carrión, the victim’s sister, and from the lawyers of the Nicaragua Never Again Human Rights Collective, an NGO of exiled defenders in Costa Rica, which together with other organizations have supported the Carrión family’s demand for justice.
Aída Carrión said she witnessed Siles subjecting her sister to “psychological, physical and economic violence” and that she also “on many occasions” observed “the physical violence he inflicted from their courtship to their marriage.”
The State of Nicaragua, which the IACHR declared in contempt in November 2022, did not send representatives to the hearing. Both the Carrión family and the defense claim that the authorities did not carry out the proper investigation of what they claim was “clearly a femicide.”
Also taking part in the session was Argentine Mariella Labozzetta, an expert invited by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and prosecutor in charge of the Crimes against Women Unit in that country, who defended the right of the Carrión family to continue demanding justice and to maintain closeness with the deceased’s son.
The judges of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will have to study the case and are expected to issue a ruling within several weeks, according to lawyers from the Nicaragua Never Again Collective.
Nicaraguan feminist and defender Sara Henríquez said that “today was a historic and masterful session for Nicaragua and the IACHR itself in terms of justice for victims of femicide.”
He added that the case of Dina Carrión became an emblematic crime precisely because of the “uninvestigated murder and the impunity of the Nicaraguan State.” The alleged perpetrator of the crime is protected by a political pact between the regime of Daniel Ortega, in power since January 2007, and the Constitutionalist Liberal Party. Influence peddling has allowed the case to remain unpunished.
Henríquez recalled that most femicides in Nicaragua are not reported due to the lack of financial resources of the victims’ families, in addition to “the lack of due diligence with a gender focus and the corruption of public institutions.”
Source: AP
