WASHINGTON (AFP) – Over 200 detained members of Nicaragua’s opposition were freed on Thursday and expelled to the United States (US), in a surprise move by the Central American country’s increasingly authoritarian president Daniel Ortega.
After weeks of quiet talks with Washington, Nicaragua allowed the 222 detainees – which include former challengers to Ortega – to board a chartered flight to Washington.
US officials said they would allow the former prisoners to stay for at least two years and provide medical and legal support.
“I would like to thank God and everyone who made possible this miracle – the miracle of freedom,” Juan Sebastian Chamorro, who was arrested before he could challenge Ortega in the 2021 election, said at Dulles International Airport near the US capital.
“We are here in the land of freedom and we are very grateful,” he said.
Chamorro, whose aunt defeated Ortega in the 1990 presidential election, said that the group had no warning until they were given clothes and taken to another cell before being put on buses. “It’s been 20 months behind bars in a maximum-security prison, totally incommunicado,” he said. “But here we are with our heads high.”
Ortega’s only comment on the move was to say that Catholic Bishop Rolando Alvarez, who was among the detainees, refused to join the others on the US-bound plane.
“Alvarez did not want to comply with the law, with what the state of Nicaragua mandates,” Ortega said, adding that the bishop returned to prison.
President of an appeals court in the capital Managua Octavio Rothschuh described the prisoners as having been “deported” and called them “traitors to the homeland”.
Nicaragua’s legislature moved to strip the expelled dissidents of their citizenship. To become law, the proposal must be voted on again in the second half of 2023.
