Through an illustrative image of the punishment cell in the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ) in Managua, known as “El Nuevo Chipote”, the student leader and former politician Max Sherry He described the conditions in which he was kept for the first three and a half months of his captivity.
«This is a punishment cell: “La Chiquita” (approximately 2.5 m²). They took me there on the day of my arrest and only kept me for several months,” said the 29-year-old opponent, through his Facebook account.
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He recounted that during his confinement there were times when he could not tell if it was day or night and that “he kept track of the days and dates written down on a bar of soap.”
In interview with Article 66Jerez said that the most difficult thing he experienced in the punishment cell was the isolation, because “being there disconcerts you and more if you are alone (…) it was constant anxiety, he had uncontrolled sleep, he could not walk inside the cell Because it was a very small space, I could barely take three steps,” he narrated.
Due to the forced confinement for more than three months in the punishment cell, the now exiled politician indicated that he presented a neuropathic problem, -weakness, numbness and pain, generally in the hands and feet- “because there was no room to move.”
He added that it was while he was in the isolation cell that he received the news of the death of his mother Heidi Meza. “It was very difficult in those conditions to cope with mourning because I had nothing to do, it was just being there, in a cell without windows or bars (…) I was without apatite for a little over a week and I was crying a lot for several days.”
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After total isolation, Jerez recounts that he was taken to a cell with bars or a “corridor” cell, as the police officers called him, however, he points out that the rules “were harsh because you could not communicate or have socialization with other prisoners who did not were the ones in the cell.”
“These were very difficult conditions and – the policemen – constantly lived saying that if the rules were not respected and I did not keep quiet they were going to take me back to the little girl that was where they had taken me from.”
According to the opposition leader, he never ruled out that he was arrested by the Ortega Police because he knew that “the consequences of doing political activism is going to jail, so my arrest was not a surprise, but a consequence.”
He also stated that the imprisonment of dozens of opponents was a defeat for the dictator Daniel Ortega “because he had to arrest us and then take away our nationality, because otherwise he could not deal with us.”
Jerez was kidnapped on July 5, 2021, a few months before the presidential elections in November 2021, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the alleged crime of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity”, since February 9 He is in exile in the United States.
