(San Jose) Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo announced Wednesday the release of 1,500 prisoners, but the 128 opponents who, according to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, are “arbitrarily” detained in the Central American country are not among them.
Mme Murillo, wife of President Daniel Ortega, said in her daily press conference with pro-government Nicaraguan media that these detainees will benefit from the “legal advantages of family coexistence” in order to “return home” after making “mistakes.”
She clarified, however, that they were “humble” people and not “outlaws”, referring to imprisoned opponents.
Mme Murillo did not mention the request made on Tuesday by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which asked Nicaragua, in a resolution, for the “immediate release” of 25 opponents imprisoned by the Ortega government.
The IACHR, based in San José, said that these opponents “are being deprived of their freedom in a context of criminalization of people who criticize or oppose the current government of Nicaragua.”
Exiled opponents in Costa Rica told AFP that such mass releases did not usually include detained opponents.
“The Nicaraguan government has openly ignored the provisions of the IHRC,” said the think tank of former political prisoners, considering that the figures of those released “are inflated,” because if they were real, “Nicaragua’s prisons would be empty, and they are full.”
Mme Murillo said that the 1,500 prisoners will be released on the occasion of the 45the anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista revolution, July 19.
In June, the IACHR estimated in a report on Nicaragua that at least 128 opponents were imprisoned “arbitrarily” in the context of a “human rights crisis” in this Central American country.
Mr. Ortega, leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), has stripped more than 300 opponents and critics of their nationality and sent them into exile, accusing them of being “traitors to the homeland” for participating in or supporting the 2018 protests against his government.
They were bloodily repressed, leaving 355 dead and hundreds of people imprisoned.
The IACHR, in addition to requesting the release of these prisoners, asked Nicaragua to “say what happened and where Freddy Antonio Quezada and Carlos Alberto Bojorge are being held,” both considered “disappeared.”