On November 6, 2021, prior to the disputed presidential elections, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered a manhunt for opponents throughout Nicaragua. At least 14 people were apprehended by the dictatorship’s Police and are being held captive in the country’s prisons. They are part of the 235 political prisoners of the dictatorship.
Thirteen months have passed since that day. Violence was present in the arrests that, according to human rights and political organizations, were illegal and arbitrary, as were the judgments to which they were subjected months later.
Donald Alvarenga, Harry Chávez, Francisco López González, Isaac Martínez, Alexis Peralta, Armando Robles, Muammar Vado, Evelyn Pinto and Nidia Barbosa, make up the group of opponents detained on the eve of the “pantomime” of elections, named after the United States and unknown by more than 40 countries of the international community.
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The list of political prisoners is completed by one more woman and four men. Their identities remain anonymous at the request of their relatives, according to the most recent update of the list of hostages of conscience released by the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners.
Pinto, Chávez and Barbosa are three elderly political prisoners who are sick and their relatives have denounced that they have not received the necessary medical care to treat their conditions and that prison conditions have worsened and they have developed new illnesses.
Donald Margarito Alvarenga Mendoza, Originally from Chichigalpa, he was the first Nicaraguan sentenced to 12 years in prison by the justice of Daniel Ortega for the alleged crimes of subversion, disobedience and rebellion at the level of conspiracy to affect national integrity.
Muammar Vado was sentenced to eight years in prison for the crime of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and five for cybercrimes, for a total of 13 years, plus a fine of 50,000 córdobas days.
Evelyn Pinto, 69, was sentenced to eight years in prison in total: five for the crime of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and three for spreading false news, she will have to pay an additional 500 days of fines and was disqualified from exercising charges in the same period. She is being held in the Comprehensive Women’s Penitentiary Establishment (EPIM) in Tipitapa.
Nidia Barbosa is imprisoned in the National Penitentiary System of Granada. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison for conspiracy to undermine national integrity and propagation of false news.
Harry Chávez, 62, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the alleged crimes of undermining national integrity and spreading news under the Sovereignty and Cybercrime laws. The opponent is detained in the National Penitentiary System (SPN) Jorge Navarro, in Tipitapa.
Alexis Peralta, originally from Condega, Estelí, was sentenced to 11 years in prison plus a fine of 32,000 córdobas for the alleged crimes of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” and cybercrimes. The sentence against the opponent was based on tweets against the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
The peasant Armando Robles, originally from Morrito, Río San Juan, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, an 800-day fine, and disqualification from holding public office for allegedly “attacking the homeland and spreading false news to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua.”
All the political prisoners were accused by the Ortega justice for alleged crimes of treason against the homeland, a legal figure invented by the dictatorship with the approval of repressive laws such as the Sovereign Law and the Cybercrime Law.
