Nicaragua’s government says it’s freeing detainees after pressure from the US

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry said Saturday the country would release dozens of prisoners, as the United States ramped up pressure on leftist President Daniel Ortegaa week after it ousted former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua said Venezuela had taken an important step toward peace by releasing what it described as “political prisoners.” But it lamented that in Nicaragua, “more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly.”

On Saturday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that “dozens of people who were in the National Penitentiary System are returning to their homes and families.”

It wasn’t immediately clear who was freed and under what conditions. Nicaragua’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The government has been carrying out an ongoing crackdown since mass social protests in 2018, that were violently repressed.

Nicaragua’s government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and more, then exiled them, stripping hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. Since 2018, it has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. Nicaragua’s government often accused critics and opponents of plotting against the government.

In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned political opponents, critics and activists. It stripped them of Nicaraguan citizenship and sent them to other countries like the U.S. and Guatemala. Observers have called it an effort to wash its hands of its opposition and offset international human rights criticism. Many of those Nicaraguans were forced into a situation of "statelessness."

Saturday on X, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs again slammed Nicaragua’s government. “Nicaraguans voted for a president in 2006, not for an illegitimate lifelong dynasty,” it said. “Rewriting the Constitution and crushing dissent will not erase the Nicaraguans’ aspirations to live free from tyranny.”

Danny Ramírez-Ayérdiz, executive-secretary of the Nicaraguan human rights organization CADILH, said he had mixed feelings about the releases announced Saturday.

“On the one hand, I’m glad. All political prisoners suffer some form of torture. But on the other hand, I know these people will continue to be harassed, surveilled and monitored by the police, and so will their families.”

Ramírez-Ayérdiz said the liberation of the prisoners is a response to pressure exerted by the United States. “There is surely a great deal of fear within the regime that the U.S. might completely dismantle it,” he said.