Nicaraguan-Costa Rican Doctor Moved to House Arrest
Yerri Estrada is another political prisoner whom the dictatorship has sent home after spending several months in forced disappearance.
HAVANA TIMES – The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo secretly released the young Costa Rican-Nicaraguan doctor Yerri Estrada — who had been in “forced disappearance” for three months — and placed him under house arrest, the Legal Defense Unit (UDJ) confirmed to CONFIDENCIAL.
“The last person (transferred to house arrest) that we know of is Yerri. We have no information about any others, and we don’t know what will happen. Hopefully, more people will be released — that’s what we want,” said Claudia Pineda, director of the UDJ.
According to Pineda, the families of those released to house arrest have been threatened so that they remain silent and do not speak about the conditions of the release. “The information hasn’t necessarily come from the family, because the families have also been threatened that if anything ‘leaks,’ so to speak, there will be consequences,” Pineda said.
The young doctor was detained on August 13, 2025, and remained in a condition of “forced disappearance” until September 12, when he was presented before state propaganda media. Estrada was sent to house arrest at his home in León. However, he must report daily to sign in at the police station.
“In the end, it has been confirmed that all those people who have been released and are under a control regime. Some have permission to move around, others do not, and all must report to the police stations assigned to them,” Pineda explained.
The regime began these silent releases on November 7, 2025, when it sent another five political prisoners home without publicly explaining the terms of their release or the restrictions imposed.
The first to be released were:
- Leo Catalino Cárcamo Herrera, 62, originally from León.
- Julio Antonio Quintana Carvajal, 67, also from León.
- Fabio Alberto Cáceres Larios, 65, from Chinandega.
- Ronald Leiva Silva, from Matagalpa.
- Jorge Danilo Portocarrero Argüello, from Jinotepe.
Release After His Mother’s Plea
Rosa Ruiz, the mother of the 30-year-old doctor, had denounced on the program Esta Semana, broadcast on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel, that her son had been tortured — but she had no way of knowing his current situation in prison.
She also explained that her other two children, Maura Estrada and a 14-year-old minor, along with a granddaughter just five years old, are now “forcibly displaced.” They were forced to leave their home after enduring threats, intimidation, and harassment by police and civilian supporters of the Sandinista regime.
On November 13, 2025, Ruiz demanded that the Ortega regime hand over her son to the Costa Rican Embassy or the U.S. Embassy in Managua. “He hasn’t committed any crime. He is a clean, honest person — the only thing he did was go out in 2018 to help the injured and elderly people who were beaten by paramilitaries and Sandinista Youth mobs,” his mother said.
In September 2025, the US State Department demanded that the dictatorship reveal the whereabouts of the young Costa Rican-Nicaraguan and requested proof of life. According to Pineda, the sustained “campaign” by the US government may be “one of the reasons” for the recent releases.
“That might be one of the reasons — that there is pressure from the State Department. Another, which may also be part of the explanation, is the health condition of the detainees. Some of those released are elderly people with health problems,” Pineda noted.
As of October 29, 2025, the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners had identified 77 people imprisoned, more than half of them in forced disappearance. On November 11, 2025, the dictatorship displayed journalist Fabiola Tercero, who had been missing for more than a year; however, her case is “more complicated” due to the lack of information, Pineda concluded.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.