The government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua released at dawn this Thursday more than 200 political prisoners who were in different prisons in that country. This was made known by relatives and opponents exiled by the regime.
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“222 political prisoners come to the city of Washington, they were released,” said Arturo McFields, Ortega’s former ambassador to the OAS, dismissed after describing his country as a dictatorship and now residing in the United States. “It’s a mass release” of prisoners rarely seen, McFields said.
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The news of the transfer of these people to the United States was known by Berta Valle, wife of the imprisoned opponent Félix Maradiaga. Valle told reporters that the US State Department confirmed to him that the Nicaraguan authorities had released “political prisoners,” that they were transferred to the Managua international airport where they were put on a plane and that they will arrive in Washington this Thursday. .
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The director of Amnesty International for the Americas, Erika Guevara Rosas, reported on her Twitter account that that organization received confirmation from several families about the release of these people deprived of liberty. “They have been sent into exile,” wrote Guevara Rosas.
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A diplomatic source in Managua confirmed to the international news agency AFP the release of the prisoners, but at the moment the Ortega government has not given an official version.
As reported by the newspaper The PressThe United States Department of State made available a number for the families of those deprived of their liberty to contact.
A spokesperson for the State Department affirmed that the United States “facilitated the transport” of imprisoned opponents that the Nicaraguan government “decided to release unilaterally.” This is a “positive and welcome” decision, added the spokesman, who ensures that the released people “left the country voluntarily” and will be able to reside in the United States for two years.
Who are the released?
The Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN), a political movement of young people in that country, confirmed that its members are on the list of those released: Lesther Alemán, Max Jerez, Mildred Rayo and Miguel Flores.
The 24-year-old German student leader is the same as rebuked President Daniel Ortega in a live televised broadcast during the start of a failed national dialogue in May 2018and asked for his resignation to resolve the sociopolitical crisis that Nicaragua is experiencing.
“Lesther Alemán and more than 200 political prisoners were released. However, they were exiled by the Ortega regime to the United States,” said the student group, through a statement announcing that they will continue fighting for the student leader and everyone recover their Nicaraguan citizenship and all their rights.
for his partJavier Alvarez, a Nicaraguan exiled in Costa Rica, confirmed to AFP that among those released are his wife and daughter, who also have French nationality.
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They have been sent into exile.
The president of Chamber One of the Court of Appeals of Managua, magistrate Octavio Rothschuh Andino, confirmed that they were 222 people “deported” to the United States.
The magistrate read a statement on the “immediate and already effective deportation of 222 people sentenced for committing acts that undermine the independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the people, for inciting violence, terrorism and economic destabilization.”
The judge did not provide the list of those released, but said that all of them were permanently deprived of their political rights and declared “traitors to the country.”
The local press reports that the political prisoners were distributed in different jails of the country, among these the ‘Jorge Navarro’ penitentiary system, known as ‘the Model prison’, located in Managua, where the majority would be. Also the ‘La Esperanza’ women’s prison, as well as the Matagalpa, Granada and Juigalpa prisons.
The Press reports that “at least 40 were in ‘el Chipote’, who are high-profile opponents, among them, young university students who stood out in the 2018 protests, presidential candidates, peasant leaders, former diplomats, businessmen, journalists, media owners, priestseven a banker and a bishop”.
The release would include opponents who were in jail.
A political source told the EFE news agency that the bishop Rolando Alvarezwho is under house arrest, was included by the authorities in the list of prisoners to be sent to Washington, but he did not accept.
More than 200 opponents were sent to prison in that country in the context of the repression that followed the protests that broke out in 2018 against the Ortega regime, in power since 2007.
The Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, which was the Executive’s counterpart at the negotiating tables, said that “more than 200 prisoners and political prisoners exiled today are innocent.”
“They suffered illegal imprisonment and torture. We maintain the demand for the restoration of freedom, justice and democracy. Nicaraguans continue to experience repression. Freedom for the people of Nicaragua!“added that opposition group in a message.
Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez, who was Ortega’s vice president in his first term (1985-1990), and is currently in exile in Spain, expressed his satisfaction at the release of the prisoners.
“Today is a great day for the fight for the freedom of Nicaragua as so many unjustly convicted or prosecuted prisoners are released from prisons, prisons in which they should never have been. They are going into exile, but they are going to freedom,” Ramírez wrote in his twitter account.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which has worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row, and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president.with its main contenders in prison or in exile.
WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING