The former Nicaraguan guerrilla Dora Maria Tellez is on a hunger strike in the prison of the Directorate of Judicial Aid, known as “El Nuevo Chipote,” demanding an end to his isolation and access to reading material, the political organization Unión Democrática Renovadora reported on September 24. (Let’s unite).
Téllez, 66, declared himself on a “hunger strike demanding the end of isolation and the possibility of having access to reading material,” reported Unamos, formerly known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), a split from the ruling Sandinista Front. National Liberation (FSLN) founded in 1995 by the writer and former president of Nicaragua Sergio Ramírez Mercado.
Related news: Cenidh: “The life of Dora María Téllez is in danger in El Chipote”
The former dissident Sandinista guerrilla, critical of President Daniel Ortega, was captured in June 2021 and later sentenced to eight years in prison for crimes considered “treason.”
Unamos indicated that, in addition to Téllez, other people considered “political prisoners” are “in the same condition”, that is, on a hunger strike, without providing details.
Téllez, a historic Sandinista combatant and Ortega’s former comrade in the struggle, is being held in the “El Chipote” police prison, which has been denounced by various humanitarian organizations as a supposed “torture center” of the National Police.
“We demand the immediate cessation of the situation of torture to which all political prisoners are subjected, and in particular Dora María, who with her characteristic firmness demands respect for her rights even in the conditions in which she finds herself,” insisted Unamos del that Tellez is a leader.
“Taking into account the contempt that the dictatorship showed for the life of Hugo Torres, who died in prison, and that of other political prisoners whose chronic illnesses are not properly treated, we have reason to fear for the life of Dora María,” the organization added. politics.
Torres died last February of unknown causes, after eight months of arrest, without having been brought to trial.
On September 17, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) issued an alert for the former guerrilla after verifying, through images released by official media, “her physical deterioration, the mark of torture on her visibly pale body weak and thin.
Related news: Dora María Téllez is “almost translucent” due to the confinement, but remains firm in her fight for the freedom of Nicaragua
Téllez was the “Comandante Dos” who participated on August 22, 1978 in the Sandinista command led by the legendary “Comandante Cero”, Edén Pastora (1936-2020), with Torres (Comandante Uno) as deputy leader, who took the National Palace and took hostage the legislators related to the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, overthrown on June 19, 1979.
The former guerrilla was praised by the Colombian Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez in his chronicle on that assault on the National Palace, which he described as “the most audacious operation in the history of urban guerrilla warfare in Latin America,” and which weakened the dictatorship of Somoza.
