HAVANA TIMES – Relatives of Nicaraguan political prisoners and organizations of those released from prison promote for the sixth consecutive year the “Christmas without political prisoners” campaign to demand their freedom. It comes in a year in which despite the release and exile of 222 political prisoners to the United States in February, and twelve priests to the Vatican in October, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo still holds at least 151 persons for political reasons.
An analysis by CONFIDENCIAL with data from the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners and the Blue and White Monitoring group revealed that at the end of October, there were at least 130 political prisoners in Nicaragua. However, the number has increased, as the dictatorship continues to imprison citizens.
Among the most recent political prisoners is the Nicaraguan philosopher, sociologist and professor Freddy Quezada, a critic of the Ortega-Murillo regime, detained on November 29 at his home in Managua.
The professor was fired from the state-run National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) in 2018, for showing solidarity with students who demonstrated against the regime over controversial reforms to Social Security and criticizing the use of force by the State. Before his abduction, Quezada has been a sharp critic on his social networks, where he signs himself as “Uliteo”
The young Sandinista tiktoker Erickson Calero Díaz was captured on November 24, accused of promoting flyers the day Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios won the Miss Universe crown. They report that he was brutally beaten in a cell in La Modelo and, according to the accounts of various prisoners, “he cannot even eat the product of the beating.”
The Police also kidnapped, on the night of November 28, Martín Argüello Leiva and Bernardo Argüello Celebertti, husband and son respectively of the now former director of the Miss Nicaragua Franchise, Karen Celebertti Moncada.
The Sandinista regime still has not reported on the whereabouts of the Arguellos and they refused to process a
