Eight days after the municipal votes in which Daniel Ortega won the 153 mayorships of Nicaragua, 21 people remain detained in different police stations out of a total of 31 kidnapped between November 1 and 8 in the context of this municipal electoral farce. informed the citizen observatory Urnas Abiertas.
The relatives of the detainees fear for their safety, for that reason, they prefer that the names of the kidnapped remain confidential, with the exception of the opposition Karla Vega, arrested on November 5 and the released political prisoner, Carlos Valle, whose daughter and former politician, Elsa Valle, confirmed that the Police raided her home last Saturday and took her father without any justification.
The arrests were characterized by being violent and carried out without any court order, sources from opposition organizations confirmed. The Ortega regime has released 10 people of the 31 it recently captured; however, “there are still a number of people kidnapped within the municipalities, who we hope will be released,” said Ivania Álvarez, a member of Urnas Abiertas.
The kidnapped remain in the police stations of Managua, Masaya, Río San Juan, Ocotal, Carazo and Chontales.
Accusation against three detainees
So far it has been confirmed, according to sources from opposition organizations and the lawyer Yonarqui Martínez -who follows up on the case as a human rights defender- that the Ortega justice accused the opposition Karla Vega, originally from El Rosario, Carazo; Allan Sebastián Bermúdez and Sandra del Carmen Acevedo Díaz allegedly “conspiracy to undermine” and “propagation of false news”, crimes that have been instrumentalized by the Judiciary for the fabrication of cases against opponents, legal specialists and defenders have pointed out.
Martínez confirmed that Vega was presented at a preliminary hearing on November 11. The initial hearing is scheduled for next Monday the 21st.
“They kicked the door for us and entered with hatred. They mounted her (to the van). They were about ten riot police. Her physical integrity and her life are in danger because since they took her out of her house they have been beating her,” a relative of Vega told CONFIDENTIAL about his arrest.
More political prisoners
In just eight days, the Ortega regime imprisoned almost half the people -31 arrests- than those captured throughout 2021 -70 political prisoners-, a year marked by an escalation of political violence and the arrest of civic, union, student leaders and seven presidential candidates.
Álvarez explains that thanks to the territorial networks maintained by Urnas Abiertas, they have been able to document these new kidnappings. However, they are concerned that the situation of 2021 will be repeated, when several people were arrested in Río San Juan days before the electoral farce -in which Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo were guaranteed a new term in power, without political competition- , were never transferred to Managua -where the largest number of political prisoners are concentrated- and now, they are imprisoned in the Cuisalá prison system, Chontales.
“It is being the same pattern, of hiding from the families because they are detained. They were violently detained, they did not give them an explanation and the Police have not presented them, and we know that now they give you up to 90 days to file a cause. Our great fear is that the same thing will happen, that they will stay in their municipalities or in the departmental capitals and be imprisoned for these already disastrous laws that we know about,” Álvarez said.
Another source from an opposition organization confirmed that the relatives are uninformed about the situation of their relatives. Police have told them they are under investigation. For their part, they consider that this new crusade against citizenship responds to the “repressive pattern of the dictatorship to be able to contain political mobility during its electoral context”.
CONFIDENTIAL confirmed based on data from the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners that 2022 is the year with the most political prisoners in Nicaragua since the brutal repression and massacre against the April 2018 Rebellion carried out by the Ortega regime.
Between January and September there were 59 new political prisoners and if the Ortega regime persists with these recent arrests, they would rise to 80 prisoners of conscience in 2022; ten more than in 2021. According to the Mechanism there are more than 220 political prisoners, of these, 29 remain isolated and incommunicado in the prison. Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), El Chipote.
