MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry said Saturday the country will release dozens of prisoners, as the United States increased pressure on leftist President Daniel Ortega a week after ousting former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
On Friday, the US Embassy in Nicaragua said that Venezuela had taken an important step towards peace by releasing what it described as “political prisoners.” But he complained that in Nicaragua, “more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly.”
On Saturday, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that “dozens of people who were in the National Penitentiary System are returning to their homes and their families.”
It was not immediately clear who was released and under what conditions. The Nicaraguan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government has been carrying out a continuous repression since the mass social protests in 2018, which were violently repressed.
The Nicaraguan government jailed opponents, religious leaders, journalists and more, then exiled them, stripping hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. As of 2018, it has closed more than 5,000 organizations, mostly religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. The Nicaraguan government has often accused critics and opponents of plotting against the government.
In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned political opponents, critics and activists. He stripped them of Nicaraguan citizenship and sent them to other countries such as the United States and Guatemala. Observers called it an effort to wash his hands of his opposition and compensate for international criticism on human rights. Most of those Nicaraguans were forced into a situation of “expatriation”.
On Saturday on X, the US State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs hit the Nicaraguan government again. “Nicaraguas voted for a president in 2006, not for a lifetime illegitimate dynasty,” she said. “Rewriting the Constitution and crushing dissent will not destroy Nicaragua’s aspirations to live free from tyranny.”
Danny Ramírez-Ayérdiz, the executive secretary of the Nicaraguan human rights organization CADILH, said he had mixed feelings about the releases announced Saturday.
“On the one hand, I am happy. All political prisoners suffer some form of torture. But on the other hand, I know that these people will continue to be harassed, supervised and monitored by the police, and their families as well.”
Ramírez-Ayérdiz said that the release of the prisoners is a reaction to the pressure exerted by the United States. “There is definitely a lot of fear within the regime that the United States could completely dismantle it,” he said.