The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega unexpectedly authorized this Friday, November 18, visits for this weekend to the relatives of more than 40 political prisoners imprisoned in the El Chipote police prison. The decision comes four days after they asked for a “life test” after 81 days without news from them in the case of those kidnapped in May 2021.
According to sources who requested anonymity, the student leader Max Jerez received the visit this Saturday, November 19, and that of Lester Alemán is scheduled for tomorrow, two of the voices of the students who openly confronted Daniel Ortega in the days of the insurrection civic of 2018. Both were captured on July 5, 2021.
But the visits of the former presidential candidates Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Félix Maradiaga and Miguel Mora were also scheduled, as well as the political leaders of the former Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS)—today Unamos—: Dora María Téllez, Suyén Barahona, Tamara Dávila and Ana Margarita Vijil, who are in solitary confinement.
Likewise, Violeta Granera, from the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), and the sports writer Miguel Mendoza. So far, there are no known comments from the relatives about the physical and emotional health situation of the convicted.
On November 15, in a public letter, the relatives of political prisoners also asked about the situation of those detained by the dictatorship in September 2022, prior to the municipal votes, whom they still maintain without the right to visit.
“We have no guarantee of proof of life, or of his state of health. To date, we are not even sure if they are in the same place where we last visited them”, they complained in the letter, in which they requested a regularization of the visits, which should be carried out every 15 days as ordered by internal legislation. .
The statement indicated that the relatives have been suffering and uncertain for months, because they do not know anything about the health condition of the detainees, nor if they have access to medical attention and food. Therefore, they declared that they fear for their lives.
Among the most worrying cases were those of four political weights –Miguel Mendoza, Dora María Téllez, Irving Larios and Róger Reyes– who began hunger strikes to demand the end of the solitary confinement regime, the right to read and write in prison , as well as communication with their minor children and adolescents.
There is also concern about the situation of Francisco Aguirre Sacasa Y Jose Adam Aguerriformer chancellor and former president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise, who were returned to El Chipote after being held under house arrest.
The last time the dictatorship showed the prisoners was in the Managua courts, where they wore aged, pale and scrawnyvictims of the poor prison conditions to which they were subjected.
In some cases, such as the former employees of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, they showed obvious physical deterioration. Walter Gomez, the former financier, for example, had lost 50 pounds as early as March 2022.
In Nicaragua there are currently 219 convicted political prisoners, of which 29 were being held in El Chipote, adding Aguirre Sacasa and Aguerri.
El Chipote is pointed out as an Ortega torture center by relatives of prisoners of conscience and human rights defenders. The inmates are considered a symbol of the fight for freedoms in Latin America where there is an expansion of authoritarianism with the most serious case of setback in Nicaragua.
The prisoners of the Ortega regime are victims of a system considered one of the most disgraceful on the continent.
