Martha del Socorro Ubilla, 60 years old, mother of political prisoners Marvin Castellón Ubilla and Marlon Castellón Ubilla, the latter released in December 2021; she is in custody and is being prosecuted by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo for the alleged commission of an unknown crime.
Ubilla was taken from her home by members of the Police the early morning of January 11. Hours later, political opponents were arrested: Javier Espinoza, sound engineer for the protests in 2018; Thelma Vanegas and José Ricardo Muñoz López, thus increasing the list of political prisoners of the Nicaraguan regime.
According to judicial matter 000749-ORM4-2023-PN, the four were criminally charged by prosecutor Luis Carlos Mongalo Roblero for the alleged commission of a crime that was omitted in the electronic version of the judicial file, in which the State of Nicaragua and Nicaraguan society appear as “victim or offended.”
The accusation against the four, according to the electronic system of the Judiciary, was formalized on January 13 and is filed in the Fifth Criminal District Court of Managua, in charge of Nalia Nadezhda Úbeda Obando.
Also on January 13 —before the accusation was known— Ubilla’s relatives filed a writ of habeas corpus, which the Managua Court of Appeals ruled on January 16 as “inadmissible.”
Arrested on previous occasions
Martha del Socorro Ubilla had been the victim of acts of threats, harassment, and surveillance by state and parastatal agents since her children Marlon Castellón Ubilla and Marvin Castellón Ubilla were jailed for having participated in the anti-government protests, first in 2018 and then in 2020.
In July 2018, Martha Ubilla was detained for 15 days at the Judicial Assistance Directorate, known as El Chipote Viejo, where “she would have suffered physical and psychological violence,” according to her account given to the police. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Ubilla was also subjected to acts of violence when she visited her children in the Jorge Navarro prison, such as being forced to undress, attempts to touch her private parts, and verbal attacks.
Since the beginning of 2020, police and parastatal agents were constantly present at the Castellón Ubilla family’s home to monitor or harass. Also in October of that year, Mrs. Ubilla was held for several hours in the National Penitentiary System, where she went to leave parcels for her son, Marvin Castellón.
The harassment of Martha Ubilla increased as of March 2021, when the regime unleashed a manhunt against political opponents and possible presidential candidates, so the Inter-American Commission decided to grant him precautionary measures in February 2022.
Other detainees
Among those accused is also Javier Espinoza, known as the sound engineer for the 2018 marches, who was arrested —for the second time— on the morning of January 11.
Espinoza, who is the son of trade unionist José Espinoza, was arrested for the first time on September 16, 2018 at his home in the Monseñor Lezcano neighborhood. On that occasion, Espinoza was detained in El Chipote for two nights and three days and was later released.
On January 9, the Police also arrested Professor Juan Bautista Guevara Carballo, 46, who was released 10 hours later, so the relatives of those arrested on January 11 expected something similar to happen, but it did not.
Until December 2022, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo kept 235 political prisoners in the different prisons of the country and, as he expressed last week, in his first speech of 2023during the installation of the new legislative period, has no intention of acquitting them despite the “campaigns” for their release.
Ortega assured that “not even with life imprisonment” could they pay off the damage that, according to him, they caused Nicaragua during the massive protests of 2018, which he again described as an “attempted coup” to which he added the description of “bloody ”.
