The murder of a Nicaraguan opposition figure raises questions about Costa Rica’s national security.

The President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, has not commented on the case of retired Major Roberto Samcam, the opponent of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who was murdered in San José, the capital of his country, on June 19. This is a crime that the victim’s family and international human rights organizations have classified as political. The Costa Rican president met on Wednesday in San José with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, to discuss the fight against organized crime and security, but did not include the execution of the Nicaraguan refugee on the agenda, despite the State Department previously offering “support to Costa Rican authorities to hold the murderers and those responsible accountable.”

The case of Samcam has called into question not only the safety of those pursued by Ortega and Murillo, who have made Costa Rica the epicenter of their exile, but also Costa Rica’s national security. Sources from the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) consulted by EL PAÍS under the condition of anonymity, former Costa Rican presidents, and the victim’s family agree that Samcam’s crime was carried out by “Sandinista cells” operating in Costa Rica, exerting extraterritorial repression that has claimed other lives: that of Rodolfo Rojas in June 2022 and Jaime Luis Ortega Chavarría in October 2024, both exiled opponents in Costa Rica.

In addition to these deaths, there was a double assassination attempt in San José on opposition member Joao Maldonado and his wife, who miraculously survived the attacks in which they were shot more than a dozen times by hitmen. In Maldonado’s case, the OIJ presented eight suspects of orchestrating the assassination attempt, including Danilo Aguirre Sequeira, a man who identifies himself as a journalist and moves freely around Nicaragua.

In the case of the two assassination attempts on Maldonado, the conclusion of the OIJ investigation states that the attacks were planned and executed with “strategies practiced at a police or military level.” “And there are strong indications of political motivation,” emphasizes a high-profile source from the OIJ consulted by this newspaper.

The extrajudicial execution of Samcam also reveals that, behind the shooter, there was intelligence. The hitman did not act randomly: he chose the exact day when they were repairing the gates of the Naples condominium, where the victim lived, and taking advantage of the free access, reached the door of the retired major’s apartment. There, he shot him eight times at close range. Samcam died almost immediately without being able to defend himself.

Samcam was one of the most systematic critics of the Nicaraguan Army and one of the first to denounce the collusion of the military in the crimes against humanity committed by the Sandinista apparatus since 2018, the year of the protests that were repressed with lethal gunfire. For months, the retired major had reported receiving death threats and had informed the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), an agency attached to the Costa Rican presidency.

The death threats against Samcam are not isolated: other activists and Sandinista opponents have been harassed and spied on in the last two years, to the point that there have been reports of trash being searched from the offices of a human rights organization in San José. In its latest report, the United Nations Group of Experts for Nicaragua has warned about the advancement of “extraterritorial repression,” with particular emphasis on Costa Rica.

The OIJ source links this modality of political crimes with the serious security crisis that Costa Rica is experiencing, where hitmen—fueled by drug trafficking and territorial disputes among gangs—have become a daily occurrence. “In Nicaragua, they know about this and how easy it is to hire a hitman who kills for money, without knowing the real motivations. So, when we manage to detain someone, it is really difficult to obtain more information, as happened with the hitmen of Joao. Furthermore, many times they hire hitmen through Costa Rican intermediaries, which further obscures the trail,” the source states.

Opposition lawmakers demand to speed up the investigation

A day before Kristi Noem’s visit to San José, the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica approved a motion demanding that Chaves’ government act diligently to clarify the causes of Samcam’s murder. With votes from the majority of lawmakers, excluding those from the ruling party, the motion calls on the government to strongly condemn the murder of the Nicaraguan ex-military.

The legislators will ask Jorge Torres Carrillo, director of the DIS, for a technical report on the protocols used regarding Samcam’s death threats. “This heinous crime, of which Roberto Samcam has been a victim, must be carried with indignation. Costa Rica is no longer that safe country for refugees, and besides, we have become not only unsafe but indifferent to this type of murder,” said Montserrat Ruiz Guevara, a lawmaker from the National Liberation Party.

But the lawmakers went further, specifically regarding the risks these Sandinista cells pose to Costa Rican national security. “These criminal groups affiliated with Daniel Ortega’s government must prompt us to reflect. We cannot allow this. We are a sovereign state, and we must guarantee the safety of people seeking refuge in our country,” criticized lawmaker and former presidential candidate, Eliécer Feinzaig.

On the other hand, Chaves’ lawmakers distanced themselves from the motion. Daniel Vargas Quirós, from the ruling Progressive Social Democratic Party, stated that there are 23,354 refugees in Costa Rica: 9,942 from Nicaragua and 7,471 from Colombia. He also mentioned that there are 224,000 asylum applicants, “who are people already living here in the country.” The legislator used these figures to contrast with the fact that there are only 18,000 to 20,000 police officers in the country, indicating that there aren’t enough to assign one officer for each refugee.

“I express my indignation at the negligence and indifference that the DIS has shown regarding the threats received by Nicaraguans exiled or refugees in Costa Rica,” said former president Laura Chinchilla. “It is unacceptable that the dictatorship’s hitmen from Nicaragua operate with complete freedom and impunity in our country.”

Political sources consulted by EL PAÍS, who prefer to remain anonymous, also agree that President Chaves does not appear diligent because he does not want to confront the government of the neighboring country and, in this way, avoid clashes that could affect, for example, a closure of the land border impacting regional trade.