The former president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), José Adán Aguerri, was sent home to continue serving under house arrest, the thirteen year prison sentence imposed by a judge of the regime that governs Nicaragua.
Aguerri was arrested June 2021almost at the beginning of the hunt for opponents ordered by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, which totals almost 190 people who are prisoners of conscience, and led to the filling of prisons with renowned private sector leadersamong them Luis Rivas Andurayat that time CEO of Grupo Promerica.
A Cosep source told CONFIDENTIALalways under condition of anonymity, that the union leadership has advocated for all political prisoners all the time, especially for their leaders, and that, although they expected to see them free, this news took them by surprise.
“I can only tell you that he is physically impaired. It’s like five years have passed for him,” she recounted. “Our hope now is that this is the beginning of a relaxation of conditions for all of them”, so that they can -at least- continue serving this “sentence” from their homes, he added.
At the time, the arrest of Aguerri, and of other leaders such as his successor in office, Michael Healy and his vice president Álvaro Vargas, generated a wave of solidarity from the Central American private sectorwho demanded the release, at that time, of Aguerri and the presidential candidates, and continental later, when the number of unfair arrests, and the spurious trials that followed, affected other union leaders.
The situation of political prisoners is so serious that, from abroad, organizations of Nicaraguan exiles, or of human rights in general, maintain active campaigns to free them.
