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When retired Major Roberto Samcam, a prominent Nicaraguan refugee in Costa Rica since 2018, was murdered outside his home on June 19 in San José, the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) ruled out a drug trafficking motive, as communicators close to the Nicaraguan regime had insinuated. The Costa Rican opposition has accused the Rodrigo Chaves government of incompetence, claiming a possible Nicaraguan state-sponsored hit squad on their soil is a matter of national security and international law.
The case has drawn heavy-hitting legal aid. Almudena Bernabeu, a Spanish lawyer who litigated the Ríos Montt genocide case in Guatemala and the Salvadoran Jesuit murder case in Spain, will represent Samcam’s wife on a prosecution team in an upcoming judicial process, alongside Costa Rican lawyer Federico Campo. Bernabeu visited Costa Rica on July 14 to gather all the necessary information for the case.
Bernabeu and Campo have stated in interviews with the exiled Nicaraguan digital outlet Confidencial that the investigation is just beginning and that the Costa Rican state could be responsible for failing to protect refugees. “This is a crime of state terrorism, a crime directly involving the Nicaraguan dictatorship,” Bernabeu told the outlet.
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Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves has said not a word about the case in public, whereas one of his party legislators, Daniel Vargas Quiros, deflected all responsibility for the case from the Executive to the OIJ. The official silence has drawn strong criticism from Nicaraguan exiles, political leaders, and the Legislative Assembly, which expressed concern for the safety of Nicaraguan refugees — around 9,942, by the Assembly’s count.
Costa Rican Congresswoman Priscilla Vindas put positive spin on the OIJ investigation. “It is in the hands of the judiciary now, with which we have better communication,” she told El Faro English. “How ignorant, for God’s sake, to continue justifying the government’s ineptitude,” fellow legislator Montserrat Ruiz emphasized. “This is about national security, and we have international agreements to comply with,” she said.
A sustained pattern
In an interview with El Faro English, Claudia Vargas de Samcam, the major’s wife, shared that they had moved to Costa Rica in 2018, amid repression of the mass uprising, because it “will be the heart of the Nicaraguan resistance; that’s where the entire opposition will establish itself, we’re closer to home, we have more roots there.” If they stayed, they thought, “something terrible could happen.”
Vargas says her husband was even more careful than she was, that he never left the house and took all necessary precautions. “We didn’t allow anyone to come to the house so that no one would know where we were, or be able to sketch our tiny apartment.”
Samcam had alerted his fellow refugees about a possible spy network targeting them. He even approached the intelligence authorities in Costa Rica to warn them and express fear for his safety. Now, his wife also fears for her life, but she has nowhere else to go.
Samcam’s murder follows two others, as well as a double assassination attempt, against Nicaraguan refugees. Jaime Luis Ortega was murdered in October 2024 in Alajuela, a border area with Nicaragua. When opposition figure Rodolfo Rodas was found dead in 2022 in Honduras, his relatives told Confidencial that “men had been trying for months to convince him that they would help him move to the United States, where his son is.”
A June 24 report by CEJIL, the Center for Justice and International Law, denounced “a sustained pattern of surveillance, threats, harassment, and acts of intimidation directed against Nicaraguan exiles in the region, especially in Costa Rica.”
Spanish newspaper El País reported that “sources from the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) consulted on condition of anonymity, former Costa Rican presidents, and the victim’s family agree that Samcam's murder was carried out by ‘Sandinista cells’ operating in Costa Rica, exercising repression.”
”I have no doubt that this is a crime with political overtones,” says Vargas de Samcam. “And of course, Roberto was a critic, he was a powerful voice. He was also responsible for documenting the Army’s involvement during the 2018 repression.”
Vindas, the legislator, adds that Chaves’ silence is compounded by the fact that the murder has gone largely unnoticed by the broader country. “Unfortunately,” she says, “in Roberto Samcam’s case, there has been no collective outrage that would compel the government to speak out on the matter, leaving it shrouded in complicit silence.”
“Costa Rica was never safe”
Opposition member Joao Maldonado and his wife were attacked in Costa Rica in 2024, following a previous assassination attempt in 2021. He now fears that Nicaraguans are in danger in any place with Nicaraguan diplomatic presence. “All Nicaraguan embassies have military attachés, who are effectively intelligence workers,“ he asserts.
“These murders practically speak for themselves about the work of Costa Rica’s national security services,” says Maldonado. “There are operators of the dictatorship in Costa Rica; the national security services know this and do absolutely nothing,” he alleges. As for the attacks against him and his wife, he adds, ”it was a well-coordinated operation, recognized by the Judicial Investigation Agency as an almost federal-level operation.”
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“There is no security for Costa Ricans themselves due to organized crime, which does whatever it wants in the country,” Maldonado continues. “In recent years, we have been following the news about murders, contract killings, and all the violence that has been increasing in the country.”
In recent years, violence has become one of Costa Ricans’ chief political concerns. According to the Violence Observatory in Costa Rica, homicides have increased since 2020: 2023 saw the largest increase in violence and there was a slight reduction in 2024, but OIJ Director Randall Zúñiga reported that if the figures continue to rise, this could be the most violent year in Costa Rica’s recorded history.
Vindas agrees on how the impunity of the Nicaraguan murders is a reflection of Costa Rican insecurity. "The president has not wanted to speak on the matter because it reflects a complete disregard for security as a whole,” she says.
Vindas asserts that the Chaves administration has taken little or no action to avoid Zuñiga’s projection, and that the Legislative Assembly has tried to allocate resources for security, but that the Minister of Finance has refused to use them. “And there is no penalty for a minister who disregards a mandate given by the Legislative Assembly,” she says.
Security for both refugees and Costa Ricans is faltering. For Luis Galeano, a Nicaraguan journalist in exile, Costa Rica was never a safe option. “While it is true that being close [to Nicaragua] can bring you a taste of home, “it also makes it easier for the regime to catch up with you,” he told El Faro English. “If I feel unsafe in Miami, those in Costa Rica must feel even more alarmed.”
This article first appeared in the July 25 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.