Ortega’s Remaining Political Prisoners after Banishing 135
Once again after a large prisoner release/banishment, ten political prisoners from before the 2018 protests and others remain in jail.
HAVANA TIMES – Jaime Navarrete Blandon, who has remained detained despite completing his sentence on January 23, 2023, is one of the political prisoners of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo dictatorship who stayed behind after the exile of 135 political prisoners from Nicaragua to Guatemala. He had already remained behind before when the first group of prisoners of conscience was exiled in February 2023.
Navarrete, 40, is the only political prisoner who has served his sentence of three years and six months for the alleged crime of drug possession. However, he is not free because the Ortega-aligned judicial system “revived” his 22-year prison sentence that had been pardoned under the Amnesty Law approved in 2019.
He was recaptured on July 24, 2019, and has remained in prison ever since. His defense lawyer, Yonarqui Martinez, points out that the man has been subjected to torture.
Ten other political prisoners remain incarcerated and were not released once again. Among them are the ten prisoners of conscience from before the April 2018 Rebellion: Ortega’s longest-serving political prisoner, Marvin Vargas, imprisoned since 2012, and nine others convicted in the case known as the “July 19 Massacre.”
A day after the September 5th exile of the 135 political prisoners, the official list with the names of those released is still unknown. The regime remains silent and conceals the official list that should be made public by its operators.
According to the Nicaraguan Group of Reflection of Former Political Prisoners (GREX), these remaining political prisoners were shaved, photographed, taken out into the sun, and given clean clothes on Sunday, September 1st. A police officer told them they “would be taken out and moved to another place,” so both they and their families were hopeful of their release. But it did not happen.
GREX also confirms that Jose Manuel Urbina Lara, a well-known lawyer and opponent of the Ortega regime, remains in prison. He was sentenced to four years for involuntary manslaughter after being involved in a traffic accident in March 2021 in which a person he gave a ride to died.
His family reported that he was in a “deplorable” condition in September 2022, having lost at least 45 pounds and was ill. Then, a supposed lawyer appeared to deny these claims. Daniel Ortega claimed that Lara was one of the political prisoners the United States refused to accept on February 9, 2023. He is one of the political prisoners over 60 years old.
Yatama Indigenous Leaders
Otras fuentes también indican que tampoco fueron excarcelados los líderes miskitos Brooklyn Rivera y Nancy Elizabeth Henríquez.
Rivera was detained on September 29, 2023, at his home in Bilwi, the capital of the North Caribbean Region. No family member has seen him since, meaning he is nearing a year of forced disappearance.
Two days after Rivera’s arrest, on October 1, 2023, deputy and Yatama president Nancy Henriquez James was imprisoned by the dictatorship, which also ordered the cancellation of the party’s legal status to remove it from regional elections, imposing absolute control over Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.
The Longest Political Prisoner
The longest-serving political prisoner alive under the Ortega regime is Marvin Vargas, a former Sandinista militant sentenced in February 2012.
Marvin Vargas Herrera
He is 51 years old and from Estelí. In February 2012, he was sentenced to five years for aggravated fraud. After several unfulfilled release orders, he was accused again in 2017, resulting in a new 12-year sentence for the alleged crime of internal drug trafficking while in prison. He was detained after leading a series of protests against the Ortega regime on behalf of the “Cachorros de Sandino Association,” representing young people who had been part of the Patriotic Military Service in the 1980s. He was nicknamed “The Cub,” symbolizing that era.
The Accused of the July 19 Massacre
The list of the ten prisoners before the April 2018 Rebellion includes nine convicted in the case known as the “July 19 Massacre,” an armed attack on a caravan of Sandinista sympathizers in 2014.
These are the other political prisoners still in jail:
Wilfredo Jose Balmaceda Castrillo
62 years old, from Ciudad Darío, Matagalpa. He was the municipal secretary of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC), according to a note published by the newspaper La Prensa.
Walter Jose Balmaceda Ruiz
42, from Ciudad Darío, Matagalpa. He was identified as the intellectual co-author of the attack. He was the driver and owner of the bus in which three young people, accused of throwing stones at the bus that was shot at, were traveling. Balmaceda was sentenced to 133 years in prison, but he will serve 30 years, which is the maximum penalty established by the Constitution of Nicaragua.
Zacarías Isabel Cano Angulo
The Ortega judiciary claimed that Cano, 59 years old, supported a second attack on another Sandinista caravan on July 19, 2014, in the Wabule district of San Ramon municipality, Matagalpa.
Jose Ricardo Cortez Dávila
69 years old, from San Isidro, Matagalpa. He described how the meetings prior to the attack took place in a video presented by the police, though this was questioned by judicial experts because no lawyer was present during the recording of the alleged confession.
Eddy Antonio Gutierrez Delgadillo
He testified at trial that he was beaten by the police, taken to a private house where Commissioner Ramon Avellan, who has been sanctioned by the United States for human rights violations during the April 2018 Rebellion, was present. He is 45 years old and from Ciudad Darío, Matagalpa.
Rosendo Antonio Huerta Gonzalez
He was found guilty of attacking the second Sandinista caravan on July 19, 2014, in Wabule, San Ramon municipality, Matagalpa.
Jose Olivar Meza Raudez
From San Isidro, Matagalpa, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “cover-up.” He is currently in a maximum-security cell known as “La 300.”
Jairo Alberto Obando Delgadillo
He was accused of being one of the three shooters against the Sandinista caravan on July 19, 2014, at kilometer 75.3 of the Managua-Matagalpa highway. In his testimony, he denounced the torture and intimidation he suffered at the hands of the police. “They told me, ‘Here you will do what we say, you son of a bitch, because you’re in our hands. If you don’t, you know, your family will die, and we will cut them to pieces, hand by hand and foot by foot.’ And I was scared because, honestly, my family means everything to me,” as reported by Magazine in La Prensa.
Leonel Antonio Poveda Palacios
The prosecution claimed that meetings to plan the alleged attack on the Sandinista caravan were held at Poveda’s house. He is 56 years old, from Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, and is in a maximum-security cell known as “La 300.”
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.