The political prisoner and leader of the Blue and White National Unity (Unab) José Alejandro Quintanilla Hernández, known as Álex Hernández, was included in the third block of opponents presented this September 1 at the Central Judicial Complex of Managua. After a year of confinement he was shown before official media with significant weight loss.
Hernández served a year in prison on August 24, after being arrested in 2021 less than three months before the disputed presidential elections of November 2021, in a day of hunting opponents that included seven presidential candidates. According to the activist’s neighbors, the police at the service of the regime “kidnapped” him outside the safe house where he was kept.
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His relatives have denounced that the political prisoner has been subjected to mistreatment and constant interrogations despite the fact that he has already been sentenced. The regime keeps him in a small cell. Álex Hernández faced trial for the alleged crime of “conspiring to undermine national integrity” and was sentenced by the justice system of the Ortega regime to ten years in prison.
The evidence used by the Public Ministry against the member of the political council of Unab was based on some videos he recorded anticipating his arrest and others related to the electoral process in which the accused denounced the irregularities, but did not request sanctions against Nicaragua, he said. the defense of the prisoner.
In addition, this is the second time that Hernández has been imprisoned on the orders of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. The first occurred in the context of social protests in 2018 and he was released under the Amnesty Law. The UNAB has denounced that the Nicaraguan regime keeps Álex Hernández in prison “for crimes that he did not commit.”
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Human rights organizations recently denounced the serious consequences that political prisoners reflect due to confinement, stating that “the consequences of arbitrary detention are notorious and the marks of torture suffered are reflected on the faces and bodies of each person.”
Given this, they demand the international community, the governments of the region and the international human rights, political and economic organizations to exert “the necessary pressure through all existing and approved mechanisms so as not to give any truce to the Ortega dictatorship.” whose objective is to establish its nefarious and violent ideology in Nicaragua.”
