EMBASSY MANAGUA REQUEST FOR TDY FOR GREG MAGGIO

C O N F I D E N T I A L MANAGUA 000599 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/EX AND WHA/CEN E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/15/2016 TAGS: APER PHUM NU SUBJECT: EMBASSY MANAGUA REQUEST FOR TDY FOR GREG MAGGIO (DRL/CA) REF: JANUARY-MARCH MAGGIO-GIAUQUE-ALVARADO EMAILS AND TELCONS Classified By: AMBASSADOR PAUL TRIVELLI. REASONS 1.4 (B,D). ¶1. (U) Embassy Managua strongly endorses a proposed three-week TDY for Greg Maggio of DRL/CRA to Nicaragua in June 2006. Post has established a close, effective working relationship with Greg while collaborating on the 2005 Human Rights Report and numerous cases of Nicaraguan asylum applicants. Post would like Greg to spend three weeks in Managua to work on several high-profile human rights issues that have considerable election year significance. Post will make every effort to provide housing for Greg in the Embassy housing pool; it is possible that he will have to share a house. Post requests that WHA/EX fund Greg's round trip airfare to Managua in order to further assist DRL in defraying the costs of the proposed TDY. ¶2. (SBU) With national elections in November, emboffs have already launched a busy schedule of political and economic reporting trips to all seventeen of Nicaragua's departments. These trips will continue throughout the year, and reporting on them reaches the highest levels of the Department. By participating in several of these trips to select regions, such as the Atlantic Coast, Greg could contribute to post's elections reporting, as well as have the opportunity to investigate, gain familiarity with, and report on human rights issues in many parts of the country. Greg has expressed a particular interest in investigating the subject of gang violence and analyzing the much-debated subject of why the problem, although growing, is not as severe in Nicaragua as in most of its Central American neighbors. ¶3. (C) Additionally, Greg could contribute to ongoing human rights projects supported by post and the Department that are intended to highlight abuses by the 1980s Sandinista regime and its leaders, including the pending complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) submitted by Zoilamerica Narvaez against the Nicaraguan state for its failure to provide justice in her credible allegations of rape and sexual abuse against her step-father, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. ¶4. (C) Post would also like Greg to work with several sections of the Mission as they assist a local human rights NGO, the Nicaraguan Permanent Commission on Human Rights (CPDH),as it completes field work on complaints of crimes against humanity and genocide committed against the Miskito indigenous group by the FSLN regime in the early 1980s. By June the CPDH will be completing phase one of this project, compiling witness depositions in Nicaragua and submitting the case to national institutions, and will be commencing phase two, preparing to submit the case to the IACHR in Washington. Because the second phase of the CPDH effort will require considerable support and follow up by the Department, post believes that Greg could contribute significantly to the ultimate success of the project, both while he is in Managua and when he returns to Washington to resume his duties covering Nicaragua at DRL. ¶5. (SBU) Greg's June TDY would also help post to provide continuity on these and other pressing human rights issues, as the human rights officer who has worked on all of these issues for the last two years will be departing post in May and his successor will not arrive until late June. Greg's proposed TDY would significantly shorten the time that a crucial Embassy position is empty during a pivotal election year. With the experience he would gain on the ground, Greg would also subsequently be in a position to provide extra assistance to the new human rights officer in July and thereafter as the new officer works to master a large and complex portfolio. TRIVELLI