Since the social uprising of April 2018, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo ordered the imprisonment of opposition leaders, activists and any dissident person who criticizes it. The dictatorship crushed the protests and put them down with fire, blood, exile and prison. To date there are 245 political prisoners, all of whom are subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The different tortures against the hostages of conscience have been documented and denounced by various local and international human rights organizations. The Be Human campaign compiled some of the phrases of psychological torture that political prisoners hear from the custodians of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), known as “El Chipote”, and in the National Penitentiary System (SPN), ” The model”.
“Because of you, your whole family is also in prison,” said a guard at “El Chipote” lying to a political prisoner held incommunicado. “Get ready, you’re going to go out”, is another of the phrases of psychological torture that a prison officer launched at a hostage of conscience detained in the cells of the dictatorship.
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“You’re only going to get out of here dead,” a custodian of the SPN “La Modelo” told a political prisoner. “Nobody remembers you out there anymore, nor does your family care about you,” is another of the fallacies told to a political prisoner as a form of torture.
Additionally, they are subjected to captivity, locked in punishment cells or maximum security pavilions, they are kept in the dark, they are not allowed access to the sun patio, they are not allowed to have a Bible and they are prohibited from reading any material.
They are restricted from regular visits by their relatives and children, they receive poor and little food, they are not allowed to be seen by doctors for various health problems; neither can they take medicine for their ailments or carry out periodic examinations.
More than 50 political prisoners have precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The continental organization has documented the serious violations of the human rights of persons deprived of liberty in the context of the crisis that the country has been going through since 2018.
In 2022, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDH Court) ordered the Ortega Murillo regime to immediately release 45 of them, most of them detained in the cells of “El Chipote”.
