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More than 200 opponents were released this February 9 in Nicaragua by the government of Daniel Ortega, deprived of their political rights, stripped of their nationality and “deported” to the United States.
Released and exiled: 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners are already in the United States where they traveled after being released by the Daniel Ortega regime, but they have also been declared traitors and stripped of their nationality through an express constitutional reform.
Medical care and contacts
“The former president of the Superior Council for Private Enterprise (COSEP), José Adán Aguerri, the former Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, Arturo Cruz, and the former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro, much loved by Nicaragua, as well as his brother Pedro Joaquín and his cousin Mr. Holman. Happy because they are coming out of those dungeons, but we still have a dictatorship that is alive and kicking and that continues to be in power in our country,” says Arturo McFields, Ortega’s former ambassador to the OAS who was dismissed after describing his country as a dictatorship and who now resides in the United States.
McFields will meet with the prisoners soon: “The first step is to give them medical attention, because after a year of being under the oppression of the regime, they need a medical check-up, especially people who have chronic diseases, people who have cancer, They were even imprisoned there,” he explains.
“The other part that was told to try to contact people from the Nicaraguan diaspora to somehow help them in their incorporation into life here in the United States, because not all of them have family here,” he adds.
“He did not accept exile”
The wife, daughter and son-in-law of Javier Álvarez, exiled in Costa Rica, have also been released. “I feel extremely happy to know that my family is already released, obviously. Well, I am going to ask them to come to where I am ”, he affirms.
However, the priests have not traveled to the United States, among them Monsignor Rolando Álvarez who, according to Javier Álvarez, “did not accept the exile because what has occurred is an exile, the Assembly issued a law taking away the citizenship of all the prisoners.” .
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that this opens a door for dialogue. “The Nicaraguan dictatorship wants to find some kind of space to take weight from the discontent that exists in Nicaragua and a way to seek economic relief, to seek image laundering,” Arturo McFields says in this regard.
For his part, Javier Álvarez thinks the issue of sanctions has been at the heart of the negotiations between Washington and Managua: “We presume, but we do not have it as a very clear thing, that it can prevent the Nica Act from being applied, a law promoted by the United States Congress, which had all the instruments open to be able to impose sanctions on the Nicaraguan government ”.
According to Ortega, there were no negotiations with the United States. He affirmed that it was his wife and his vice president, Rosario Murillo, who contacted the US Embassy in Managua to request the release of the 222 political prisoners.
Some twenty political prisoners are still detained in Nicaragua.