Hugo Torres, former guerrilla and one of the imprisoned opponents in Nicaragua, dies at 73

The main opposition organizations in Nicaragua blamed the government on Saturday for the death in prison of the former guerrilla commander and retired Army general, Hugo Torres Jiménez, who in 1974 helped free the current president, Daniel Ortega, from prison, and who died in prison. at 73 years old.

"Hugo dies as a political prisoner of the dictatorship and the responsibility for his death falls on her, for having imprisoned him and keeping him kidnapped until today, the date of his death," the leadership of the opposition movement UNAMOS, of which Torres was vice president and whose five other top leaders are in jail.

"The death of our vice president in the hands of the dictatorship is another crime of the many committed by the Ortega Murillo family.

," he added.

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The opposition National Blue White Unit (UNAB) also spoke out, which in a press release maintained that the Ortega Administration "is solely responsible for the death of Hugo Torres, as he is under his custody and by subjecting him to torture, extensive interrogations and precarious conditions in which he was locked up".

"This is one more example of the degree of contempt this regime has for life and human dignity," commented the opposition Civic Alliance.

Meanwhile, the Public Ministry confirmed in a statement the death of the legendary former guerrilla and attributed it to "a deterioration in his health" that warranted transferring him to a capital hospital.

The Government did not specify what illness he had, or where his death occurred.

Retired Nicaraguan Army General Hugo Torres in front of the National Palace in Managua in 2017.Getty Images

Hours earlier, the children of the former guerrilla commander—Hugo Marcel, María Alejandra and Lucía Aracelly Torres—reported their father's death in a mourning note and announced that by their father's will "no funeral services or public activities will be held."

Torres and the other five leaders of that movement were captured by the police in June 2021 on charges of "conspiracy to undermine national integrity," as part of

.

UNAMOS was known until last year as the Sandinista Renovating Movement (MRS), formed in 1994 by dissidents from the FSLN, such as the writer Sergio Ramírez and a group of deputies who rebelled against the vertical leadership of Ortega, who would finally ban it in 2008.

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Along with the UNAMOS leaders, another 40 opponents were jailed—between May and November—including seven presidential hopefuls who had announced their intention to challenge Ortega for power.

According to the opposition, more than 170 "political prisoners" have remained in jail since the 2018 social uprising.

Ortega accused the opposition leaders of having tried to carry out a "coup d'état" through these protests, which were put down with violence by the police and paramilitaries,

, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

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Torres is the "first political prisoner" to die in the prison of those opponents who were arrested between May and November, and the second after the opponent Eddy Montes, who died in the La Modelo Penitentiary Center on May 16, 2019 as a result of a shot by a prison guard during a riot, according to authorities.

The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) recalled on Twitter on Saturday that on several occasions they demanded information from the Police and the Government of Nicaragua about his whereabouts and his state of health, without receiving a response.

"Another terrible crime of #Ortega, the tyrant of #Nicaragua," tweeted human rights activist Bianca Jagger, while the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) expressed on the same social network that "it fills us of pain and indignation

".

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The "Commander One"

Born in the northern city of Somoto on April 25, 1948, Torres was a guerrilla commander for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which in 1979 overthrew Anastasio Somoza's military regime.

In 1980 he was appointed head of the political leadership of the Army, an institution he served until 1998, when he retired with the rank of brigadier general.

On December 23, 1974, Torres intervened in the assault of a Sandinista commando on the house of the former Minister of Agriculture of the Somoza government, José María Castillo, while a party was being held in honor of the United States ambassador in Managua, Turner Shelton.

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The operation, in which Castillo lost his life, allowed Daniel Ortega and other imprisoned Sandinista guerrillas to be released from jail.

Ortega had been arrested in 1967 for participating in a failed robbery at a Bank of London branch in Managua.

Four years later, on August 22, 1978, Torres used the alias "Comandante Uno" to participate as one of the leaders of the armed assault on the National Palace (headquarters of Congress) together with the disappeared Edén Pastora ("Comandante Cero") and Dora María Téllez ("Comandante Dos"), also imprisoned by Ortega since June.

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Hours before his capture in June, Torres recorded a video that was released shortly after, in which he recalled his role in the Sandinista guerrilla and Ortega's release.

"

now fiercer than the Somoza dictatorship, more unscrupulous, more irrational, absolutist," Torres said in that video.