Rico’s TICO BULL – Justice in Nicaraguan had no doubt to convict Moisés Francisco Sándigo Fernández for the murder of a hotel entrepreneur and his two children, on February 9, 2013, in La Fortuna de San Carlos, in Costa Rica.
For Costa Rica’s judicial system, at the time, the evidence was considered insufficient to reach a verdict in i2014. However, in 2016, the same evidence was key for authorities in the neighboring country to give Geovanny Soto Ruiz, 52, and his children Mauricio and Emmanuel, 29 and 20 years old, final justice.
“Judge Adela Cardoza said that the indictment was duly proven because in the trial, the testimony (via video conferencing) of forensic experts and agents of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) of Costa Rica was accepted into the record. In total 62 documents of the case were also presented,” cites Nicaragua’s Hoy newspaper.
The publication reports that the Fiscalia (Office of the Prosecutor) asked for a sentence of 129 years in prison against Moisés Francisco Sándigo Fernández, the only accused for the crimes of kidnapping, robbery with violence and intimidation and murder of the Costa Rican hotelier and his two children.
I am going to spare you the details of the crime.
What is important here is, once again, Nicaragua’s judicial system takes seriously heinous crimes committed by its citizens, in its own country, or wherever they may be.
Sandigo was tried in Nicaragua because in 2016 he fled custody during the second trial that was against him in Costa Rica. It wasn’t until March of this year that he was arrested in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua does not allow the extradition of their citizens but will try its citizen for crimes committed abroad.
Moisés Francisco Sándigo Fernández will be sentenced on May 16, 2019.
This is not the first such case.
On several occasions over the past few years, Nicaraguan nationals have committed some pretty gruesome crimes in Costa Rica and fled north, where, once apprehended, are on trial, sentenced and begin serving their prison time in a matter of months.
A case in point is that of a Nicaraguan man who slaughtered an entire family in Guanacaste in February 2016. The only suspect in the “Matapalo massacre” fled north and was captured after his family learned of the shit he had done in Costa Rica. In a matter of months, he was tried and convicted to 183 years in prison.
Had he remained in Costa Rica, I bet the back 40 he would still be awaiting trial in the legal process that can take years from apprehension to trial to sentencing to incarceration.
