The Nicaraguan regime announced last weekend the release of “dozens” of opponents and critics imprisoned, under pressure from the United States and a week after the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his close ally.
The Washington embassy in Managua assured on Friday on the social network “more than 60 people” were still “unjustly detained” or missing.”
Nicaraguan NGOs and media outlets working from exile in Costa Rica and the United States indicated that those released are between 20 and 30and that among them there are opposition activists and social leaders critical of the government.
“The Nicaraguan dictatorship, on the one hand, releases prisoners who had already been imprisoned for a long time and, on the other hand, imprisons others just for expressing his joy at the capture of Maduro. This proves its status as a bargaining chip,” an anonymous source from the Union of Political Prisoners of Nicaragua (UPPN) told RFI.
In photographs and videos released by the official press, one can observe several detainees hugging with relatives who were summoned to receive them. Others show their release documents.
The Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, which also works from exile, counted 62 detainees in Nicaragua until last December. In a statement, the Mechanism celebrated the release.
Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo They govern Nicaragua as co-presidents with absolute power and they are Maduro’s unconditionalcaptured by the US military in Caracas and taken to New York to face trial for drug trafficking and other charges.
Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans were forced into exile, hundreds were detained and their expropriated properties. The government even stripped many of their Nicaraguan nationality.
A group of UN experts has demanded that Ortega and Murillo answer for “serious violations” of human rights, including “crimes against humanity.”