Costa Rica’s ongoing investigation of the murder of a prominent Nicaraguan dissident leaked into the open in March, revealing how the underbelly of the Nicaraguan government is systematically persecuting political opponents, hiring assassins to kill them in foreign countries, and potentially protecting powerful criminal interests at home.
InSight Crime obtained a copy of these documents via CR Hoy, a prominent Costa Rican media outlet. They focus on the case of Roberto Samcam, a former Sandinista rebel commander who became a high-level military officer in the Nicaraguan government only to later become a fierce critic living in exile before his startling assassination in Costa Rica in June 2025. For longtime Nicaraguan analysts, Samcam’s murder and the documents he left behind reveal the lengths to which the regime will go to maintain its grip on power.
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“The brutal murder of Roberto Samcam in Costa Rica, as denounced by his family and human rights organizations, clearly illustrates that a policy of transnational persecution does indeed exist,” said Elvira Cuadra, the director of the Center of Transdisciplinary Studies on Central America. “What this means is that there is intent, planning, organization, and resources dedicated to carrying out this type of operation.”
Total Power
Samcam’s open opposition to the regime began in 2018, the year Nicaragua’s government began the brutal suppression of organized protest movements. He gave interviews, wrote columns and blogs, and later penned a book.
He may also have been a major source for the United Nations Group of Experts, which issued a series of reports about the systematic repression of Nicaraguan citizens at home and abroad, and have provided intelligence to the Costa Rican authorities and perhaps even United States counternarcotics officials.
Samcam had plenty of material to write about, and government repression was a turning point for the country. The regime extrajudicially executed at least 40 and as many as 106 civilians, most of whom were protesters, according to a report issued in 2023 by a United Nations’ Group of Experts on Nicaragua. (The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that over 330 civilians were killed.) Specifically, the UN said there was a deliberate “intent to employ combat tactics and cause the death of protesters instead of using crowd control techniques,” which it said were “crimes against humanity.”
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The Nicaraguan government had previously denied extrajudicially executing anyone, claiming instead it was thwarting a coup attempt by opposition figures. And in an interview, Ortega said, “Not a single one of the peaceful protests was attacked.”
But these did little to persuade the international community. In two subsequent reports, the Group found that the regime—which, as of 2025, is run by Ortega and his wife, Co-president Rosario Murillo—had consolidated power over Congress, the military, and the police. The co-presidency also controls intelligence, prosecutorial, forensic, immigration, telecommunications, and judicial institutions, which they employ to systematically spy, mount false charges, unlawfully detain, arbitrarily cancel citizenship, and torture opposition figures from all corners of society.
“The Group identified that the President and Vice-President [Murillo] give orders and instructions, either directly or through trusted advisors, to the various institutions that then carry out repressive acts against real or perceived opponents and their families,” the UN said in its March 2024 report.
Amazingly, it was about to get worse.
Persecution Goes International
Following the 2018 protests and subsequent repression, thousands of Nicaraguans fled the country. By the UN’s count, asylum applications went from 2,722 in 2017 to 356,201 by the end of 2024. Many went to Spain to escape the reach of the regime. But others took their chances in places like Costa Rica.
Among those who went to Costa Rica were Joao Ismael Maldonado Bermúdez and Roberto Samcam. Maldonado and Samcam were not close, according to Costa Rican authorities, but both had participated in the protests from Carazo, a state just southwest of Managua and an epicenter of the opposition movement at the time. And the two maintained contact and remained active in the opposition movement abroad.
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For his part, Maldonado helped start a group, United Nicaraguans in Exile (Unidad de Exiliados Nicaragüenses – UEN), and organized a march against the regime. The day before the march, however, Maldonado was shot four times. He survived, but in 2024, gunmen caught up with him and shot him another nine times. He survived again. His wife was left tetraplegic by the second attack.
Maldonado was not the only one under fire. In their investigation, Costa Rican authorities note two other cases of suspicious attacks against prominent dissident figures. Both of the men died.
The attacks on Maldonado and others put Samcam on high alert. Like Samcam, Maldonado was accused by the Nicaraguan government of fomenting rebellion during the April 2018 protests. They both received regular threats via telephone from people they presumed worked with the Nicaraguan intelligence agencies and the Sandinista army. And they both complained to Costa Rican authorities on numerous occasions about harassment and the spreading tentacles of the regime.
In fact, Costa Rican authorities surmise that these contacts with Costa Rican intelligence may have, at least in part, played a motivating role in Samcam’s murder. One Nicaraguan witness also told investigators that Samcam’s “information” played a significant role in the United Nations’ report regarding government repression during 2018, which the witness said irked the regime, helping to set in motion the assassination.
The Dirty Work
Both Maldonado and Samcam told Costa Rican authorities the threats were coming from officials inside the Nicaraguan government, and Costa Rican authorities believe the regime outsourced its hit squad. Specifically, they point at Keny Navarrete, a Nicaraguan national incarcerated in Alajuela, Costa Rica, for aggravated robbery and kidnapping, among other charges, who they believe organized the assassins from inside prison. (Costa Rican authorities also write his name as Kenny and Kenne.)
At this stage of the investigation, the evidence is circumstantial. For instance, they point out that Navarrete used his phone an unusually large amount of time around the time of the assassination, and one of the alleged shooters had saved a contact he called “Kennet” in his phone. Navarrete and one of the assassins were also in the same prison for a short time period.
For Costa Rican authorities, Navarrete’s origins are also crucial. They hypothesize that “territory defines the objectives” of the Nicaraguan regime. In the case of Samcam and Maldonado, this goes back to the 2018 protests, as both were charged with crimes in Carazo, an epicenter of opposition activity. One of Naverrete’s Facebook profiles says he is a native of Diriambo, a municipality of Carazo. And Naverrete’s aunt, Costa Rican authorities note, was a pro-regime city council member of a neighboring municipality in Carazo during the protests.
Most remarkably, Costa Rican authorities think the plan to assassinate both Maldonado and Samcam originated inside Nicaragua’s military intelligence division, the Information Defense Services (Dirección de Información para la Defensa – DID). The DID, the investigators say, contacted a pro-regime “paramilitary group” in Carazo, where Maldonado and Samcam were alleged to have illegally armed and organized the protestors in 2018.
That paramilitary group allegedly contacted Navarrete, who contacted the hitmen. And on June 19, 2025, an assassin, posing as a delivery man, entered the gated community where Samcam lived and rang his doorbell. When Samcam answered, he shot him eight times. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Possible Motives
Nicaraguan authorities did not make any official pronouncements after Samcam’s murder or after the Costa Rican investigation became public.
But Costa Rican authorities offered several possible motives for the assassination.
To begin with, he was fomenting regime change, according to numerous testimonies collected by the Costa Rican authorities. Specifically, he drafted a document in which he and others proposed what they called a Transitional Government Assembly. The document was leaked prematurely by Samcam himself, some of those interviewed say. In the same interviews, they said they worried about his safety following its publication, and the Costa Rican investigators made numerous notes of its possible implications.
Besides his blogs and articles against the government, other materials were found on his computer, including a hand-drawn map that seemed to indicate where there were numerous clandestine runways for the “Sinaloa Cartel.” The map also notes the place where Nicaraguan authorities supposedly seized some drugs, which the map says was a “chow” (presumably a misspelling of the English word, “show”). And it mentions the names of several military officials, insinuating their direct participation in the criminal activity.
“Roberto, along with two or three other analysts, were the most active in denouncing the participation of the police and the army, not just in the repression, but in their involvement in organized crime,” noted Javier Meléndez, a Nicaraguan national and the director of Expediente Abierto, a think tank and media group.
Still, the assertions are difficult to substantiate, and the Nicaraguan government has long claimed that it has been a model of counter-narcotics operations, not a facilitator. But the country has also become a safe haven for accused traffickers from Honduras and Guatemala, among others, and the US State Department said in its 2025 counternarcotics report that Nicaragua facilitates money laundering while using anti-money laundering legislation to target dissidents and opposition groups.
Samcam, as noted, was also a vital source for information on how the regime operated. He spoke with Costa Rican authorities, the document notes, providing them with an intricate understanding of Nicaragua’s military intelligence services and their operations, including names of possible operatives in Costa Rica. And he may have also contributed to the United Nations reports that have vilified the regime on a global stage.
Samcam, in other words, was what criminals might call a snitch. And that may have led to his undoing.