(Managua) The former hero of the Sandinista guerrillas Hugo Torres, spent in opposition to the President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega for whom he had once risked his life, died Saturday in prison at the age of 73.
Posted at 9:43 p.m.
“We communicate with deep pain the death of our adored father”, announces a statement from the family, published by the opposition platform Unity Blue and White (Unab) of which Hugo Torres was a member.
Imprisoned on June 13 in the dreaded prison of El Chipote in Managua, Hugo Torres Jimenez was one of the 46 opponents arrested by the Ortega government, which accused them of hatching a plot against him with the support of the United States.
He had been taken out of prison on December 17 to be hospitalized, according to relatives.
“By the express will of our father, no funeral tribute or public ceremony will be celebrated,” the family said.
Hugo Torres was vice-president of the opposition party Democratic Renovating Union (Unamos), which emerged in 1995 from a current of the Sandinista party in disagreement with Daniel Ortega.
He was one of the leading players in the fight against the Somoza dictatorship, the family that reigned supreme over Nicaragua between 1937 and 1979.
Hugo Torres notably led a guerrilla operation in 1974 to free prisoners, including Daniel Ortega himself.
“46 years ago, I risked my life to get Daniel Ortega out of prison,” Mr. Torres recalled in a video recorded before his arrest last year.
“I am 73 years old, and I never thought that at this stage of my life I was going to be fighting in a civic and peaceful way against a new dictatorship,” he also said.
A retired general, he had been caught in the roundups of opponents ordered a few months before the November 7 elections. These arrests allowed Daniel Ortega, rid of all his potential rivals, to be elected for a fourth consecutive mandate.
prisoner in hospital
Eighteen of the 46 detained opponents have been found guilty by Nicaraguan courts in the past two weeks, and seven have received sentences of 8 to 13 years in prison.
The Nicaraguan public prosecutor’s office indicated that General Torres had died “as a result of an illness”, and that the “definitive suspension” of the proceedings against him had been requested and obtained.
“As soon as his state of health deteriorated, he was transported to a hospital for adequate treatment, and where he was always accompanied” by his three children and his son-in-law, assured the prosecution.
But according to former Sandinista guerrilla and opposition to the government Monica Baltodano, in exile, General Torres died while he was a prisoner in the hospital and “could hardly move on his own” due to a inflammation of the legs.
“We deeply mourn the death of a hero of the struggles against the dictatorships that dominated Nicaragua, the dictatorship of Somoza, and now that of Ortega, which is a brutal and criminal dictatorship,” she told the Canal 100 Noticias television channel, broadcast on the internet from exile.
The Unamos party had denounced in January the deterioration of the health of its imprisoned vice-president and had demanded in vain from the government information on his state of health.
“He was subjected to physical and psychological torture in the detention center,” Unamos denounced on Saturday.
The Organization of American States (OAS) “deems it abominable to keep political prisoners suffering from terminal illnesses in detention, without the necessary medical assistance,” she said in a statement.
“It is a shame” that General Torres “had to die as a prisoner and that his jailer was the one he himself had freed from the prisons of Somozism”, regretted his former comrade in arms and Sandinista dissident Julio Lopez.