Rodolfo Alexander Zamora Sandovalformerly entrenched in the former Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (UPOLI) during the social protests of 2018, was listed with 221 former political prisoners who were exiled from Nicaragua on February 9 of this year.
After having been arrested twice for participating in various sit-ins against the Daniel Ortega regime, Zamora had to go into exile in Costa Rica in 2019, after learning that there was an arrest warrant against him, however, he says that on September 16, In 2020 he had to return to Nicaragua and that same day he was arrested by the Ortega Police.
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The 23-year-old opponent, originally from Managua, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the alleged crime of conspiracy against the State of Nicaragua and for drug trafficking, he was held for two years and five months in the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, known as “La Modelo”, in Tipitapa.
In interview with Article 66, the ex-dictatorship narrated the psychological and physical “trauma” he suffered in the captivity imposed by the Ortega regime. “I still have scars from all the torture I suffered by common criminals, close to the regime.”
“They tried to repress me for demanding my rights, because I never stopped demanding justice. The guards of La Modelo entered my cell to steal my belongings, they denied me medical consultations; They treated me as if I were a criminal,” he denounced.
He also described his confinement and that of all political prisoners as a day-to-day survival. “There the strongest survives, despite the fact that the prison authorities sent the common inmates to beat us, we always demanded that our rights be respected.”
No hope of being released
After the repressive wave of the Daniel Ortega regime against Nicaraguans, Zamora stated that he had lost all hope of getting out of prison. “My only hope was placed in God, because everything looked bad for the imprisoned opponents.”
Days before being banished, the former politician said that the confinement in La Modelo was practically “hell”. “We didn’t know what was going to happen to us. We only expect the worst or a miracle,” he pointed .
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“On the night of February 8, they took us out of our cells and transferred us to module 16.1, (…) we were afraid of where they would take us, many cried because they thought they were going to kill us, until at five in the morning on 9 — of the same month— we arrived at the air force and they notified us that we were going to the United States,” he said.
“I saw when Monsignor Álvarez refused to get on the plane”
He also said that he had the opportunity to see Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, bishop of the Diocese of Matagalpa, who refused to board the plane to be exiled from Nicaragua.
“I was the last one to get on the plane and I saw when he grabbed the stairs of the plane and refused to get on, he was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and black pants, then they took him in a private vehicle, already at the The next day I realized that they had sentenced him to 26 years in prison,” he said.
For Zamora, the religious “does not deserve to be imprisoned just for being from the Catholic Church and being against a regime – of Daniel Ortega -,” he added
“I am Nicaraguan wherever I go”
Now free, he assures to thank God for the new opportunity to continue living.
“I have to continue working for my family and when Nicaragua changes its government, I am sure that I will return to continue fighting for my country,” the opponent stressed.
Regarding the banishment he suffered on the orders of the dictator Daniel Ortega, Rodolfo Zamora expressed that “I don’t care what the government says about me, it has always said that I am a criminal and I am not, just because I am a fifth-year student high school and for thinking differently they beat me, kidnapped me and took away my whole life, but God will do justice.
«A document does not identify me or take away my pinolero blood, I am Nicaraguan wherever I am and wherever I go. I will continue to demand justice for the freedom of Nicaragua and that of all the political prisoners that still remain,” stressed the exiled opponent in the United States.
