More nights of hunting opponents in Nicaragua: 18 people were captured by the police of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo between May 12 and 14, in a new repressive scenario that has been characterized by the express prosecution of those arrested for the political crimes of "conspiracy to commit undermining national integrity and propagation of false news."
Unlike what happened before with the opponents, who were locked up in the country's prisons, at the beginning of May, the Government decided not to imprison 57 detainees, but, after sentencing them in a few hours and without the possibility of having access to legal defense, forced them to attend daily police stations to "sign".
The new day of captures occurred in the departments of Rivas, Managua, Masaya, Granada, Chinandega, Chontales, Madriz, Boaco, as well as in the two autonomous regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, reported the Blue and White Monitoring, an organization that has been responsible for keeping track of "arbitrary" detentions. Among the new detainees is Juan Carlos Márquez, a member of the student organization, Alianza Universitaria Nicaragüense (AUN). The young man was abducted by officers from his home in Nandaime, in the department of Granada, when he returned from mass.
In Managua, Dr. José Luis Borge, a member of the Nicaraguan Medical Unit, was arrested. In July 2021, the doctor was summoned by the Prosecutor's Office for an armed case against several doctors who denounced the negligence of the Ortega-Murillo regime during the covid-19 pandemic. In the capital, the notary public Alejandro Vélez Brenes was also captured. Kilometers further south, in Masaya, Yolanda González Escobar was intercepted by the police, despite having precautionary measures that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) gave her after her house was raided twice.
"Entrenching the state of terror"
For the opposition organization Blue and White National Unity, "all these actions of the dictatorship, as well as the cancellation of the licenses of lawyers and notaries to 26 Nicaraguans, seek to strengthen the state of terror in the country and the defenselessness of the population in the face of daily and flagrant violations of human rights."
The Blue and White National Unity stressed that, as of May 3, dozens of Nicaraguan citizens have been captured and that includes the "illegal search of their homes, the dispossession of their electronic devices and, in several cases, of movable property and even money." "In the following days, the police have been carrying out 'visits' to different Nicaraguan citizens and relatives of others in exile, in order to threaten them and warn them that they are police targets," the organization denounces.
Political analysts consulted by EL PAÍS, but who requested anonymity out of fear, agree that this new modality is part of a repressive trend "foreseeable by the Sandinista dictatorship that clings to a revolving door policy to have political prisoners as bargaining cards and to dismantle any outbreak of opposition in the country."
"This obligation to go to police stations to sign daily is a form of intimidation whose objective is not only to dismantle opposition networks in the country, but that many make the decision to go into exile. This is also a rational calculation by the regime to reduce the political cost of having more prisoners in jail," Douglas Castro, a sociologist in exile, told Divergentes.
EL PAÍS has learned that several of those arrested and convicted in May have already been exiled to Costa Rica, where they have fled through paths to avoid attending daily police stations to sign. "To stay is to be in limbo, because already convicted you do not know what day the police come to your house to lock you in El Chipote," said one of those affected who has just arrived in San José.
"The goal is that there is no opposition within Nicaragua. Personally, I think it is impossible for them to achieve their goal. There's always going to be some kind of resistance or some kind of opposition from the catacombs, even if they don't manifest themselves openly," Douglas Castro said.
Ex-Sandinista denounces murder of nephew
On the other hand, Marlon Sáenz, a Sandinista dissident who is one of the 222 political prisoners exiled by the regime in the United States, denounced this weekend that his nephew-in-law, Erick Centeno Ríos, died in police custody.
Through videos posted on his Facebook account, Saénz showed the violent capture that the police made of his nephew on May 13 at the Corn Island airport, in the Southern Caribbean of Nicaragua. "This was the capture and murder of my nephew Erick Rios. Then he turned up dead," the exile said.
At least five police officers got Centeno Rios out of his truck, pinned him to the ground and beat him. Saenz said his nephew's body was sent to the municipality of Condega, in the northern department of Estelí, where he was from. The man was buried Monday.
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