Eleven months after the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo banished him to the United States along with 221 other political prisoners, businessman Michael Healy had just found a job that made him “happy.”
However, this Thursday, January 25, he died due to a heart attack while he was in Panama.
Healy's unexpected death has shocked Nicaraguan opponents exiled in the United States and Costa Rica.
The businessman was one of the most visible critics of the presidential couple, because he was the last president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), the employers' association that was canceled by the regime in March 2023.
Before assuming the presidency of Cosep in 2020, in a context in which the alliance between the Sandinista regime and big capital was broken by the repression exercised by police and paramilitaries against citizens who shook the Government, Healy was head of the Unión Unión of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic).
“As president of Upanic, he always maintained a voice critical of the regime at the time when there was understanding between Cosep and the regime,” Félix Maradiaga, a political scientist and also a political prisoner exiled with Healy in February 2023, tells EL PAÍS. .
Chased and confiscated
Among the great businessmen, Healy was one of the most persecuted by the Ortega-Murillo.
He first had his family's property confiscated.
It was a farm located in the department of Rivas, located in the south of Nicaragua.
200 blocks of land were illegally confiscated by a group of armed men.
The lands were used for planting sugar cane and bananas.
The farms are called Santa Lucía, Zopilote and Chatilla, where there is also a Healy family cemetery.
At that time, Healy denounced that “land grabbers” endorsed by the regime took up to 9,800 blocks of land in eight departments of the country.
“91% of the lands taken belonged to the agricultural sector,” said the businessman.
In October 2021, after attending an appointment at the Prosecutor's Office in a scenario of arrests of opposition leaders, journalists and presidential candidates, Healy was arrested by police officers.
Later, in May 2022, the businessman was convicted in a trial in which the rules of legal procedure and his constitutional rights were violated, as he was tried in secret, without the right to defense.
The regime imposed 13 years in prison on Healy along with businessman Álvaro Vargas, who was sentenced to nine years, for the political crimes "of laundering money, property and assets to the detriment of the State and Nicaraguan society and carrying out acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination.”
Confinement in El Chipote
Healy was held in the feared El Chipote prison, where he was subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment, according to human rights organizations.
When the presidential couple banished the 222 political prisoners 11 months ago, the businessman arrived in Dulles, on the outskirts of Washington, emaciated and with health problems.
Healy was also an American citizen.
When Washington sent a plane to Managua to rescue political prisoners, he was one of the most enthusiastic after regaining their freedom, according to an account published by the State Department last December.
“Marta, I love you!” Healy shouted on the plane (alluding to Marta Youth, deputy chief of mission of the US diplomatic team that coordinated the rescue of the political prisoners).
“Healy was in good spirits.
He approached Bill Muntean, who had grown a long beard during the pandemic, and asked: 'Bill, what the hell happened to you?'
'Mike, you're the one who's been in jail for the last year and a half!' Muntean responded," reads the chronicle released by the State Department.
Juan Sebastián Chamorro, an economist and exiled political prisoner, told EL PAÍS that he felt “dismayed and very sad with the departure of our dear friend Mike,” which is what they called the businessman.
“Mike was someone I have known my entire life.
An extraordinary human being.
Mike had a huge heart.
He had an enormous ability to apologize when he felt it needed to be apologized.
An enormous generosity and a great believer in cell ten.
He was very rigorous with his rosary at 10:00 and 15:00 in the afternoon.
And his prayers filled us with a lot of faith and a lot of hope,” says Chamorro.
“Mike suffered a lot in the last part of his life.
First, with the arbitrary and legal confiscation by the dictatorship, the destruction of his farm that he loved so much and that was always in his prayers to return to his beloved homeland, where his father is buried." .
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