The lawyer and opponent José Pallais Arana was imprisoned on June 9, 2021. The commissioner and director of the León Police, the sanctioned Fidel Domínguez, came to arrest him at his home without any court order. Since that day, 11 months ago, he became a political prisoner of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The also former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua has been subjected to interrogations, poor nutrition, denied medicine, a blanket to cover himself from the cold and access to hours of sunlight; They are cut off and isolated.
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In January of this year, his wife Jilma Herdocia denounced that Pallais had lost 90 pounds in weight, after being held captive for more than seven months in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as “El Nuevo Chipote”, in Managua, accused of ” treason against the country”.
“My husband is very weak, he has difficulty walking, he suffers from dizziness and back pain, although he is in good spirits, he is very concerned about the situation we are experiencing,” she said at the time.
Sent to house arrest
On February 18, 2022, he was sent home to “house arrest” under police custody, the Public Ministry reported in a statement. Like Pallais, they passed to the same regime the political prisoners Francisco Aguirre Sacasa and Arturo Cruz.
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The three opponents presented a serious deterioration in their health after more than eight months in prison. The measure was announced after the death, in police custody, of opponent Hugo Torres. The Renovating Democratic Union (Unamos) has requested an exhaustive investigation of the real circumstances in which Torres, a member of the organization, died.
Beneficiary of precautionary measures
José Pallais was held in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), a torture center, according to reports from relatives of political prisoners. Right there, a marathon trial was held that lasted seven days and culminated in a guilty verdict against him for the alleged crime of “undermining national integrity.” The dictatorship sentenced him to 13 years in prison for being a member of a WhatsApp group along with other opponents.
On August 27, 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary protection measures in favor of José Pallais Arana, a prominent opposition leader from the department of León. The body considers that the political prisoner is in a serious and urgent situation of risk of irreparable damage to his rights.
