In the early hours of this Thursday, February 9, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship released 222 political prisoners, who were held in different prisons in the country, revealed sources linked to the relatives of the prisoners of conscience.
Diplomatic sources confirmed that the foreigners were boarded on a charter flight that travels to the United States, where it will arrive in the North American capital at noon.
Among those released are prisoners who have been in the Modelo and La Esperanza prisons for more than two years, and prisoners of conscience who have remained in the El Chipote prison and under house arrest for more than 600 days.
During the night of this Wednesday, hundreds of prisoners were taken from their cells at the Modelo prison and boarded buses that took them to an unknown destination. Several of the prisoners who were under house arrest were also taken, supposedly to a judicial hearing.
In recent weeks, Ortega judges applied “accessory penalties” in the sentencing sentences of political prisoners in which they impose an alleged “perpetual disqualification” of their political and civil rights.
Lawyers who are experts in criminal law described these sentences as “void”, “illegal” and “unconstitutional”, because they do not exist in the Nicaraguan legal framework, and demanded the annulment of the spurious trials so that all prisoners of conscience fully recover their freedom and their political rights.
“Deported” and without civil rights
While the flight that transports the 222 prisoners of conscience is heading to the United States, magistrate Octavio Rothschuh Andino, president of Chamber One of the Managua Court of Appeals (TAM), was in charge of publicly notifying that this institution was the one that ordered the “immediate and already effective deportation” of the 222 ex-conscience.
“To protect peace, national security, public order, health, public morality, the rights and freedoms of third parties, those sentenced who, for different crimes, violated the legal and constitutional order, attacking the State of Nicaragua and society Nicaraguan, harming the supreme interest of the nation, therefore the immediate and effective deportation of 222 people is ordered,” the magistrate read.
It also indicated that the “deportation” of the ex-conscience was ordered yesterday, February 8, 2023, through a resolution in which they emphasize that the 222 deported people “were declared traitors to the country and punished for different serious crimes and permanently disabled to exercise public office in the name and service of the State of Nicaragua as well as to hold positions of popular election, leaving their citizen rights perpetually suspended,” he stressed.
The US was a “unilateral decision”
The Government of Joe Biden informed the US congressmen that the exile of the Nicaraguan political prisoners was a “unilateral decision” of the Nicaraguan Government, although it stressed that “we welcome these people to the United States.”
“While we have constantly pressed publicly and privately for the release of political prisoners in Nicaragua, the Government of Nicaragua made its own decision to release these political prisoners,” the US government explained.
He explained that the United States facilitated transportation and entry into the United States and will provide “emergency support,” which includes medical care, provision of essential items, basic living costs, and psychosocial monitoring.
“We cannot comment on the details of the people released by the Government of Nicaragua, apart from indicating that included in this group is Mr. Michael Healy, a citizen with dual US and Nicaraguan nationality,” the communication said.
Ortega hate speech
In November 2021, after his third illegitimate re-election, Daniel Ortega delivered the first of his most virulent speeches against the political prisoners whom he ordered to imprison to annul their electoral and political competition.
Ortega called the political prisoners “sons of bitches of the imperialists”, in addition to his customary epithets of “traitors and country sellers”, to deny them their status as Nicaraguans.
“Just as President (Franklin D.) Roosevelt said that Somoza is a son of a bitch, but that he was our son of a bitch, that is, those who are imprisoned there are the sons of bitches of the Yankee imperialists. They should be taken to the United States, because they are not Nicaraguans, they do not have a homeland, so that there they can serve for what they are, slaves of the empire, traitors to the homeland,” Ortega shouted to the applause of his followers. .
Last January, Daniel Ortega also used his first speech of 2023, during the installation of the new legislative period, to make it clear that he will not acquit the 235 political prisoners despite the “campaigns” for their release and assured that “not even with a chain perpetual sentence” could pay off the damage that, according to him, they caused to Nicaragua during the massive protests of 2018, which he again described as an “attempted coup d’état” to which he added the qualification of “bloody.”
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