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Nicaragua Secret Police and Intelligence
The secret police and intelligence operations of the
Ministry
of Interior under the Sandinistas were the main
instruments used
to maintain FSLN control and suppress dissent. The secret
police
agency, the General Directorate of State Security
(Dirección
General de Seguridad del Estado--DGSE), carried out
surveillance
and operations against perceived opponents. The DGSE could
arrest
suspected counterrevolutionaries and hold them
indefinitely
without charge. It operated its own detention and
interrogation
centers and clandestine prisons. The DGSE was reported to
have
been assisted by at least 100 Cuban advisers.
After Chamorro's election in 1990, the DGSE was
transferred
to the army along with 1,200 of its 1,700 members, and
renamed
the Directorate of Defense Information (Dirección de
Información
para la Defensa--DID). The DGSE's chief, Colonel Lenín
Cerna
Juárez, a militant Sandinista, became head of the DID.
Human
rights activists called on President Chamorro to remove
Cerna
from his position and to investigate human rights
violations
attributed to him while he headed the DGSE. In 1993
Chamorro
removed the DID from EPS control by transferring it to the
Presidency as the Directorate of Intelligence Affairs.
Cerna was
then replaced by a civilian. Nevertheless, the EPS
continues to
maintain a security office under a Sandinista EPS officer,
and
Cerna was transferred to the post of inspector general of
the
EPS.
Little is known about the way DID functions as part of
the
military, but it is believed to conduct both military
intelligence and internal intelligence gathering. Local
human
rights groups claim that the DID has followed the DGSE
practice
of operating wiretaps, intercepting mail, and conducting
illegal
searches of homes and businesses. Unlike the DGSE,
however, DID
does not have the power of arrest and therefore is not in
a
position to impose its authority on the civilian
population, as
was the case with its predecessor agency.
Data as of December 1993
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