This Thursday, February 9, a list of 222 political prisoners of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo was transferred from the different prisons in Nicaragua and the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ) in Managua on a private flight to Washington. However, this number is less than the one recently updated by the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners.
The list of people “deported” by the Nicaraguan dictatorship was revealed this morning, but the exact number leaves out 23 people of the 245 detained until January 2023. The data highlighted 10 new arrests, mainly of residents linked to the Catholic Church and relatives of political prisoners.
Related news: The list of political prisoners in Nicaragua increases to 245
According to the information, the group, which represents more than 80% of those detained by the regime, includes candidates for the Presidency of Nicaragua, journalists, human rights defenders and activists.
“The use of maximum security cells, the unsanitary conditions of the cells, and the ill-treatment and torture have had a negative impact on their physical condition, generating diseases such as fungal allergies, blindness due to lack of light, constipation, pain of bone due to the blows and sequelae of COVID-19. As well as stress, anxiety, and depression,” said a recent report from the mechanism.
According to the list of exiled opponents are Dora María Téllez, Ana Margarita Vijil, Yubrank Suazo, Lesther Alemán, Suyen Barahona, Miguel Mendoza, Medardo Mairena, Max Jerez, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, José Adán Aguerri, Violeta Granera, Tamara Dávila and Miguel Mora, who, according to complaints from defense organizations, were under physical and psychological torture.
In mid-August 2022, Aguerri was sent under the house-to-prison regime, while Maradiaga and Chamorro and Granera were presented to the dictatorship’s propaganda media at the end of August and beginning of September, they were noted for losing their weight and the havoc that more than a year of forced confinement has caused.
The Ortega judiciary imposed sentences of 13 years against Chamorro and Maradiaga, while Granera was sentenced to eight years. The hostages of conscience faced seven hearings that, according to their defenders, were “riddled with irregularities.” During the trial, Chamorro and Maradiaga “were prevented from speaking at any time during their trial; They were only allowed to nod “yes” or “no” and were even punished for doing it too enthusiastically.
On the other hand, the student leaders and leaders of the Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN) Aleman and Jerez were violently detained in a police operation when they were in their homes. Both were sentenced to 13 years in prison each. They were accused by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo for the crime of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.”
Ortega and Murillo launched a manhunt for opponents from May to November 2021 on the eve of the presidential elections. In that brutal onslaught, he imprisoned student leaders, peasant leaders, presidential candidates, human rights activists, feminists, journalists, political analysts, and members of the opposition. According to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners. Opponents in the country’s prisons and all were subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The regime had accused most of the “deportees” of “treason and undermining the defense, sovereignty and self-determination for peace.”
