Daniel Ortega’s regime ordered former Vice Foreign Minister Víctor Hugo Tinoco to be sent home to jail, after keeping him locked up for 338 days in the cells of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as El Chipote. The diplomat joins ten other prisoners of conscience who have been sent home in recent months due to his deteriorating health.
Sources consulted by CONFIDENTIAL confirmed that the political prisoner was transferred to his home during the night of this May 16 and that, as occurs in the properties of other prisoners of conscience who are under that regime, the relatives who live in the place were left totally incommunicado; no internet, cable, cell phones, tablets, computers or televisions.
“He’s already home. He has not yet been informed under what figure he is, but it is probably under house arrest or judicial detention, surely in the next few hours they will inform him, ”said the source to CONFIDENTIAL.
In addition, he mentioned that the relatives and the lawyer of the prisoner of conscience did not know anything about the change in measure and “they grabbed them at close range, took him to the house and then they began to take away all kinds of communication so that he could stay in the property”.
Tinoco, former Sandinista guerrilla and dissident of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), was imprisoned on June 13, 2021 and in February 2022 the Ortega justice sentenced him to 13 years in prison and disqualification from public office, for the alleged commission of the crime of “undermining national integrity”.
The relatives of the prisoner of conscience have rejected the accusations against Tinoco and, in these more than 300 days of confinement, have repeatedly requested a change in prison measures, since the political prisoner suffers from several comorbidities, including hypertension and asthma. .
After the seventh day of visits authorized by the Ortega-Murillo regime, between April 28 and 30, Tinoco’s relatives warned of the deteriorating health of the political prisoner, noting that they found him “pale”, “thinner” and “with signs of memory loss”, as a result of poor nutrition, few hours of sunlight and the permanent confinement he suffered in El Chipote.
On that occasion, they also denounced that Tinoco had been deprived “without justification and with apparent intent to torture” of the medicines prescribed by a psychiatrist for his anxiety crises.
Relatives of other political prisoners of El Chipote, after attending that seventh day of visits, also denounced that prisoners of conscience suffer from the lack of access to health in a timely, adequate and specialized manner; have worsening heart problems and blood pressure; they have been deprived of their medicines as a method of torture; they have repeated problems with allergies, fungi and skin lesions; and suffer from severe pain and injuries to the back and neck.
Daniel Ortega’s regime keeps more than 180 people imprisoned in the different prisons of the country. Along with Tinoco, there are eleven political prisoners who have been sent to a home prison regime with permanent police surveillance. The other prisoners of conscience who are under this regime are: the presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro; her brother Pedro Joaquín; former deputy María Fernanda Flores; the former presidential candidate, Noel Vidaurre; the political commentator, Jaime Arellano; and former diplomats José Pallais, Arturo Cruz -also a candidate for the presidency-, Edgard Parrales, Francisco Aguirre Sacasa and Mauricio Díaz.
