Ana Margarita Vijil talks about her experience in “El Chipote”
and that of other former political prisoners in Nicaragua
Ana Margarita Vijil concluded her exposé by asking the international community to let the world know what is happening in Nicaragua.
HAVANA TIMES – Nicaraguan political leader Ana Margarita Vijil spoke before the Barcelona, Spain Bar Association about the 606 days that the Ortega-Murillo regime kept her imprisoned in the cells of the infamous “El Chipote” jail and then expelled her to the United States and took away her nationality along with 221 others.
“The self-convened feminists of Barcelona and the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women’s Human Rights Defenders invited me to share my testimony at an event. A few days ago, they sent me the recording that I want to share with you,” Vijil said on her social networks.
She clarified that some situations have stayed the same since the day she shared her testimony, but others have changed because at present “there are already more political prisoners in Nicaragua than the figure I gave that day. Also, some of us have since begun the process of applying for Spanish nationality.
“I was lucky compared to many other political prisoners. They knocked me around, but they did not beat me like they did to my niece Tamara Davila, who was arrested in her home in the presence of her five-year-old daughter. I saw the shirt she was wearing that day, which they returned a year later. You can see that the police tried to wash it, but the blood stains from the nose hemorrhage caused by their blows remained,” said Vijil, discussing her case for the first time publicly.
She added that Violeta Granera, who turned 71 in prison, suffered both physical and psychological torture because female officers slapped her and pulled her hair while she was handcuffed, in addition to putting audios of accusations in her ear.
She also highlighted the case of her friend Suyén Barahona, who was arrested the same day as her in front of her four-year-old son. “Just for turning around to look at him, she was told by a policewoman giving orders: If you raise your head again, I will slit it! Her head was pushed so hard that she needed months of exercises and pills to get rid of the pain of the injury they caused,” Vigil said.
“A colleague who had been imprisoned twice before told me about the atrocities she suffered on those occasions. Beatings with the butt of an AK rifle and deprivation of food in her first arrest. And for her second arrest in 2019, while imprisoned in a police station she was threatened with death, an AK pointed at her head, face down with her hands and feet tied. One of the torturers inserted his finger into her vagina.”
Vijil shared that something that struck a blow to her when she was in jail was when Hugo Torres died in police custody in 2022. She said that an investigation to find out exactly what happened in this case is still pending.
She also shared that after February 9, 2023, when 222 people were banished from Nicaragua and stripped of their nationality, their families in Nicaragua were left to suffer the consequences. Many of them are still being harassed, and family reunification is being thwarted.
Ana Margarita Vijil concluded her exposé by asking the international community to let the world know what is happening in Nicaragua.