Nicaragua: Body of Another Dead Political Prisoner Released
The family of Attorney Carlos Cardenas Zepeda was called to receive the body of the prisoner, abducted 15 days earlier from his Managua home and held in forced disappearance.
HAVANA TIMES – On Friday, August 29, the Nicaraguan regime headed by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo released the body of Attorney Carlos Cardenas Zepeda, confirmed sources tied to the Catholic Church. The lawyer had been abducted from his home fifteen days previously, in one of the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s round-ups of anyone they suspect of opposing their rule.
From 1997 until 2016, Carlos Cardenas worked as legal advisor for the Comptroller’s Office in Nicaragua, which audits, inspects and controls the administration of the country’s National Treasury. In 2018, during the National Dialogue, Nicaragua’s Episcopal Council – the official mediators of the Dialogue – asked him to help with technical collaboration.
The source from the Catholic Church that disclosed the prisoner’s death also confirmed that the family of the deceased is “very frightened.” Journalists report that they’re under continuous surveillance from the National Police.
Cardenas is the second political prisoner to die this week in the custody of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. On August 25, the dictatorship also released the body of Mauricio Alonso, taken prisoner with wife and son on July 17th, in Carazo department. His wife was released the same day, but Alonso and his son remained in a state of forced disappearance until the family was called to retrieve the body.
In both cases, the dictatorship ordered a rapid burial. There is no known investigation or statement of cause of death.
Second imprisonment for Cardenas
Carlos Cardenas had already served time as a political prisoner. He was detained at his house in Ciudad Sandino, near Managua, on August 20, 2018, while arriving home after picking up his youngest daughter from school. At that time, his family denounced his abduction to the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center, as it represented a threat against other lawyers who, like Cardenas, were defending the other political prisoners.
Six prisoners have died in the regime’s custody
The death of Carlos Cardenas while imprisoned is the sixth such incident of political prisoners dying while in the custody of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship since the large-scale 2018 protests. The other five prisoners are:
Eddy Montes, 55, from Matagalpa and a dual citizen of Nicaragua and the United States, was the first such prisoner to die. He was shot by a guard at the El Modelo prison on May 16, 2019.
Hugo Torres Jimenez, 73, a retired Brigadier General, was imprisoned by the dictatorship in June, 2021 and died in prison on February 12, 2022, after over two months of public secrecy regarding his whereabouts and state of health.
Humberto Ortega Saavedra, 77, founder and former head of the Nicaraguan Army, died on September 30, 2024, as a political prisoner of his brother, Daniel Ortega, after having been put under house arrest on May 19 and in total isolation since June 11, 2024.
Santos Flores, 52, included in the list by some of the human rights organizations, denounced a case of alleged sexual abuse perpetrated by Daniel Ortega. Flores was detained in 2013 and perished in the Nicaraguan men’s prison El Modelo under suspicious circumstances in November 2021.
Mauricio Alonso, was reported deceased on August 25, 2025, nearly six weeks after his abduction on July 17, part of an ongoing pattern of round-ups of suspected opponents that the Nicaraguan dictators carry out prior to each year’s July 19th commemoration of the Sandinista Revolution.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.