SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Costa Rican authorities announced on Friday the arrest of four individuals in connection with the murder of Roberto Samcam, a 67-year-old retired Nicaraguan military officer and vocal critic of President Daniel Ortega. The fatal incident occurred on June 19, when a gunman entered Samcam's condominium complex in the northeastern part of the Costa Rican capital, San Jose, and shot him multiple times with a 9mm pistol.
According to Costa Rica's Judicial Investigations agency, the perpetrator of the attack fled the scene immediately following the shooting. Samcam had been living in exile in Costa Rica since July 2018, after a violent assault by paramilitary forces at his home in Nicaragua. His outspoken opposition to Ortega’s regime made him a target for reprisals.
On Friday, authorities reported that they executed three raids in an area north of San Jose, leading to the apprehension of three suspects. An additional suspect was arrested a day earlier in the city of Cañas, located in Guanacaste province, to the west of the capital. The agency's director, Randall Zúñiga, disclosed that one of those arrested is believed to be the intermediary who coordinated the other involved parties, while another individual, a 20-year-old, is alleged to be the gunman. A third arrestee has been identified as a driver associated with the crime. Furthermore, Zúñiga mentioned that the girlfriend of the intermediary is also in custody.
Despite these arrests, investigators have not yet identified the mastermind behind the killing or whether anyone outside Costa Rica was connected to the crime. Zúñiga highlighted the similarities between Samcam’s assassination and an attempted murder in 2024 involving Joao Salgado, another Nicaraguan opposition figure. Salgado survived being shot multiple times and attributed the attack to a cell associated with Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front. In both instances, the attackers employed a driver from the same neighborhood, and Zúñiga described the execution of the attacks as "clumsy."
Since Ortega's government initiated a violent crackdown on widespread protests in 2018, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have sought refuge in Costa Rica. Samcam played an integral role as an expert for the Court of Conscience in 2020, organized by the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in Costa Rica, where he collected testimonies from individuals who endured torture and other abuses inflicted by the Nicaraguan government.
In 2022, he published a book titled "Ortega: El calvario de Nicaragua" (Ortega: Nicaragua’s Torment), and the following year released another work detailing his observations of Ortega's ascent to dictatorship. The Nicaraguan regime, since its brutal suppression of opposition during the protests, has systematically targeted dissent, closing hundreds of non-governmental organizations and persecuting various religious groups, including those of the Catholic Church.
