TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2005
Supreme Court to Consider Opening Case against Tsokos!
By Katherine Hoyt
On May 26th, 2005, Nicaragua's Supreme Court agreed to consider the request by indigenous rights lawyer Maria Luisa Acosta that a criminal case be opened against (Greek-born, naturalized U.S. citizen) land grabber Peter Tsokos and his lawyer Peter Martinez. Acosta believes the two men were the intellectual authors of the murder of her husband, Francisco Garcia, Bluefields businessman and science professor. Two men, Ivan Argüello and Wilberto Ochoa, have already been convicted in a Bluefields court of murder for hire. Police laboratories showed that the bullet that killed Garcia came from a gun belonging to Peter Martinez (which police obtained by going door to door to check guns with the claim that someone had been shooting into the air in the neighborhood).
Maria Luisa Acosta, director of the Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples (CALPI) had been meeting late with a Pastors for Peace delegation to Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast in April 2002 when the murder happened. She believes that she was the target because of the legal cases she had filed against Tsokos for his usurpation of indigenous land (which he is still selling on the internet at http://www.tropical-islands.com/ Because she was not at home, she believes the murderers tortured and killed her husband instead. The corrupt judge who oversaw the first investigation of the case (under Nicaraguan law--based on the Napoleonic Code--judges have an investigative role) first arrived on the scene in Peter Martinez' car and later, in a legal procedure called "sobreseimiento," definitively dropped any and all possible charges against Tsokos and Martinez. He has since been removed from the bench for these and other irregularities.
It seems probable that Nicaragua's Supreme Court is moving now to answer one of Acosta's several petitions to reopen the case because the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), had agreed to hear the case when all channels within Nicaragua's legal system had been exhausted. The pressure on Nicaragua's government from international solidarity may have had an effect as well. The Nicaragua Network has sponsored numerous letters and faxes to Nicaraguan authorities about the case as well as visits to the Nicaraguan embassy in
Washington, DC, and an investigative delegation to Nicaragua in late 2002, co-sponsored by Pastors for Peace.
Click here for more information about Maria Luisa Acosta in a past article.
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