Peasant leaders and political prisoners Peter Mena, Freddy Navas Y Medardo Mairenaformer candidate for the Presidency of Nicaragua, have been imprisoned this June 5 for 11 months in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as “El Nuevo Chipote”, in Managua.
The three leaders were arbitrarily detained, for the second time, when the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo undertook a hunt against opposition leaders in 2021. The dictatorship accused them of alleged “treason against the fatherland” and prosecuted them for the crime of alleged conspiracy to undermine national integrity.
In February they were sentenced for the Judge Felix Salmeron to 10 years in prison and, in the case of Mairena, to 13 years in prison and disqualified from holding public office during that period.
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“They were fighting for our human rights and our civil liberties. Our leaders have not committed any crime, they are innocent. We demand immediate and unconditional freedom for them and for all political prisoners,” the Peasant Movement of Nicaragua denounced this day through its Twitter account.
Relatives of political prisoners and the Peasant Movement have repeatedly denounced that opponents have lost weight and continue to be subjected to continuous interrogations, poor nutrition and psychological abuse in El Chipote.
On the seventh family visit, authorized in March, they found that Mairena is still in a punishment cell, where it is “unbearably hot.” “They keep the light bulb in her cell on day and night, with little access to the sun, and the daily interrogations continue,” she denounced. The situation has caused her skin allergies and circulation problems.
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In interview with Article 66one of his relatives said, at that time, that Medardo compares the punishment cell in El Nuevo Chipote” with those of the “hell” of the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, in Tipitapa, where he was confined for more than 10 months between 2018 and 2019.
During the 2018 repression, Ortega’s justice sentenced him to the ridiculous sentence of 216 years in prison for having committed alleged acts of “terrorism”, a term that the regime used to name social protests.
Like marena, Navas Y Ore They were branded “terrorists” and, months later, they were released from prison under the controversial Amnesty Law, a rule that left the perpetrators of the more than 300 murders committed in the context of the 2018 sociopolitical crisis unpunished.
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Since their release, the peasant leaders have been victims of continuous harassment by police and government party fanatics. They are currently part of the more than 180 political prisoners in Nicaragua.
