On Sunday, Daniel Ortega’s government released and banished to Mexico the husband and son of Karen Celebertti, former director of Miss Nicaragua, who had been detained on charges of alleged “conspiracy,” according to sources close to the family.
At the moment Martín and Bernardo Argaello are flying to meet Karen Celebertti, said opposition leader Juan Sebastián Chamorro, friend of the couple, in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter.
A Celeberty contributor confirmed the information to The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity on condition of security grounds. The government has not spoken out about it.
The newspaper La Prensa reported that Argaello and his son are on their way to Mexico, after being taken out of the prison of the regime, where they had been staying since the end of last November.
Father and son were arrested at the end of last November by Nicaraguan police after accompanying Celebertti to the Miss Universe pageant in El Salvador, where Nicaraguan Sheynnis Palacios was crowned on November 18.
The surprising triumph of Palacios unleashed an explosion of joy in the streets of Nicaragua that caused discomfort of the Ortega government, as demonstrations have been banned in the country since the social revolt of 2018. The current beauty queen participated in those protests, according to photos that Palacios herself then posted on her social networks and later deleted.
According to the local press, the immigration authorities prevented Celebertti from entering the country on 22 November, and days later the police arrested her husband and son after raiding his home in southwestern Managua.
The police issued a statement on 2 December in which they accused the three family members of the crimes of -betting the homeland, conspiracy to alter peace and incite hatred and violence – in addition to organized crime, money laundering, financing terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Without presenting evidence, the police also argued that the family – who ran the Miss Nicaragua franchise and other modeling companies – was part of a plot and an opposition plot, which intended to repeat the 2018 protests in the country following the triumph of Palacios.
Four days later, without referring to the accusation and arrest of his family, Karen Celebertti announced her “retiro” from the Miss Nicaragua franchise and recalled that she carried out that organization successfully for 23 years, as a project – always clean of political roots.
The Miss Universe organization accepted Celebertti’s resignation, praised her work at the head of Miss Nicaragua since 2001 and said she has not for the time being had any franchise partners for the country of Nicaragua, where President Ortega’s children and daughters-in-law are linked to beauty contests and design and modeling companies.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in La Prensa Grafica