Hall to Be Tried by Nicaraguan Political Court

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A U.S. congressman’s brother who was arrested for snooping at a military base entered Nicaragua with U.S.-backed rebel forces on a previous mission and will be tried by a political court, President Daniel Ortega said Tuesday.

He also announced that the army has sent 6,500 troops to Nicaragua’s tense border with Honduras for three-day maneuvers to prepare “for the eventuality of a U.S. invasion.”

Ortega’s remarks to reporters made it clear that his leftist Sandinista government will use the trial of Sam Nesley Hall to accuse the Reagan Administration of plotting direct military action to topple the Managua regime.

Hall, the brother of Ohio Democratic Rep. Tony P. Hall, could be sentenced to up to 30 years’ imprisonment under the accusations Ortega described.

“The North American policy is a mentally unbalanced policy, so it is not strange that they sent mentally unbalanced people here to carry out terrorist actions,” Ortega said of Hall, a self-described free-lance anti-communist warrior, who was arrested last Friday.

“From a military viewpoint, when you are planning to attack a country, you send guys like him to verify information about targets from close up,” Ortega said.

Hall, 49, of Dayton, Ohio, was initially charged with trespassing at the Punta Huete air base 13 miles northeast of Managua. The government said he was carrying a hand-drawn map of the base and other strategic military targets in his sock.

While admitting he has no evidence of the prisoner’s direct government employment, Ortega said Hall will be tried “for acts against Nicaragua’s security and terrorist actions directed by the United States.”

Without giving details, Ortega said Hall had worked in Honduras with U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista contras and once “penetrated into Nicaraguan territory with those mercenaries, to deliver explosives.”

Hall will be tried by the People’s Anti-Somocista Tribunal, which was created to prosecute “crimes against the revolution” after Gen. Anastasio Somoza was deposed as Nicaragua’s ruler in 1979.

On Nov. 15, such a tribunal convicted and sentenced another American, Eugene Hasenfus, 45, to 30 years in prison for dropping weapons to contra forces. Hasenfus was the cargo handler on a plane shot down over Nicaragua on Oct. 5.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who arrived for a three-day visit Monday, met 90 minutes with Hasenfus in prison Tuesday and reported him to be in good spirits. Ortega said Dodd will be allowed to see Hall today.

Ortega spoke to reporters after receiving a visiting representative of the Polisario Front, a guerrilla group fighting for control of Africa’s Western Sahara territory.

Later, Ortega and Nicaragua’s top two Foreign Ministry officials dined with Dodd, who is to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs in the new session of Congress.

The senator, who had hoped to gain a Christmas pardon for Hasenfus, told reporters afterward that it was “a very good meeting” that touched on regional peace prospects but that “no decision has been reached on Hasenfus at all.”

Hall is still undergoing pretrial investigation, Ortega said, and has given “coherent declarations.”

“He is a guy who has been fanaticized by all the hysteria in the United States by leaders like the President that gives people the idea they have to go fight against certain countries like Nicaragua,” Ortega said.

The troop maneuvers Ortega announced started Tuesday within a few miles of the Honduran border in the flat coastal plain of Nicaragua’s northwest Chinandega province.

They involve nearly all the soldiers, reserves and militiamen in Nicaragua’s 2nd Army Region, including 80 tanks, 108 cannons and 5 infantry brigades.

Honduras formally protested the maneuvers as “inopportune and highly provocative, given the climate of tension that exists in the area.”

The U.S. Embassy in Honduras announced that U.S. military forces in that country will take unspecified “preventive measures” against a Nicaraguan incursion.

The Sandinista army for months has pursued contras in mountainous Honduran territory to the east of Chinandega. On Dec. 7, after a substantial Nicaraguan incursion, Honduran troops were flown to the border in U.S. helicopters, and Honduran planes struck inside Nicaragua for the first time.

Ortega dismissed the Honduran protest as “absurd.”

“The United States is looking for any excuse to take part directly in the war against Nicaragua,” he said. “The contras are finished, so the United States is using Honduras as an instrument to launch itself at Nicaragua.”

The Nicaraguan Defense Ministry said the maneuvers in Chinandega are defensive and were planned early this year.

But Western military specialists said the maneuvers are worrisome because they are unusually large, close to the border and involve artillery fire that could land in Honduran territory.