Jan-Michael Simon: “To the extent that they export their violence, it will be easier to investigate them”
The president of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua states in this interview that the violence of Ortega-Murillo against Nicaraguans has no precedent in Central America and states that “all regimes that fall, pay.”
In La Prensa , August 17, 2025
The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua of the United Nations, known by it acronym as GHREN, is preparing to offer in September a new report on the human rights violations that the dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have been committing against Nicaraguans since 2018.
Even though the president of the Group, the German Jan-Michael Simon, requests in this interview that he not be asked about the findings of the recent investigations, like the role of the Army in the repression and who are the people who are benefitting economically with the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, the expert did point out that to the extent that the regime exports its violence outwardly and also pursues its own people, it will be easier to investigate them.
Simon, 58 years old, a lawyer specialized in international and human rights law, and former member of the German Armed Forces, knows very well what has happened on Nicaragua during the last 50 years because, at the service of the UN, he has served on human rights missions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras since the 1990s, and has investigated the history of Nicaragua, even though he has only been in Nicaragua as a tourist. Since he has been a member of GHREN Ortega-Murillo have not allowed him to enter the country.
In Guatemala he was part of the Truth Commission which investigated massacres in the war during which the leftist guerillas fought government forces for more than 30 years, which ended in the Peace Accords in 1996. In Honduras he worked with the high commissioner of the United Nationa after the protests over the coup in 2009 of the president Manuel Zelaya. In El Salvador he was part of an international panel to elect the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which later played an essential role in restoring the Rule of Law and democracy in that country.
In the case of Nicaragua, he currently works with the Uruguayan Ariela Peralta Distefano and the Hungarian Reed Brody, as independent experts.
In this interview, Simon indicates that Ortega-Murillo remain in power on the basis of naked and unrestrained power, committing abuses that have no precedent in the Central American region, but that history teaches that this type of regime falls, and then they pay for their crimes.
What led you to accept the challenge of leading the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua?
This mission coincides in many aspects with what I did before (in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), but it differs in two very concrete aspects. One is that it deals with a society (Nicaraguan) which has had several conflicts in recent decades, and none of them have undergone a process of transitional justice in the least, as has happened in the cases of Guatemala and El Salvador, and at least partly, in Honduras in 2009, because there was a truth commission.
In Nicaragua, and I am not referring to the Truth Commission that the government of Nicaragua installed in its time, it was not about that, when we are talking about transitional justice as an authentic process of the recovery of the historical memory and restitution for the violations suffered by the victims, and in addition it differs, in the case of Nicaragua, from a process which culminated in a total and totalitarian control of the political system of society in general, we said that in the first report, in its heart it is a nearly classic case where the branch of a State completely takes their own population hostage. In terms of this magnitude, there are no precedents in the entire region of Central America and that is why I was interested in the case.
Have you been in Nicaragua?
I knew Nicaraguan from before, but not in an official function, but rather as a tourist.
What did you think?
A beautiful country, with many attractions given its beauty in terms of beaches, architecture. The case of Granada is really fantastic. Its people, who have a lot in common with the rest of the Central Americans which is a people, when I talk about people I am talking about something beyond the Nicaraguan people, Honduran people, rather about Central American people who are very friendly and in a certain way are different from the people of South America. I was raised not just in Germany but also in South America, in Brazil, and I know the rest of the countries of the south, and yes there is a considerable difference between peoples. Each one has their advantages, but I feel very comfortable and very good in the region of Central America.
So, had you already heard of Daniel Ortega?
I had heard about Ortega since I was very young because of the interest that I have in international law, I am a lawyer, and the case of Nicaragua, since the 1980s, has always been of interest to me and the entire context of this case. So I was familiar with the history of the last 50 years of the country (Nicaragua) and had also read the GIEI[1] report before taking on this post. The situation in 2018 was very present in my reading about the region, because I have always been interested in what is happening in Central America.
What exactly did you know about Ortega? Has your initial opinion about him changed?
I did not know anything about Daniel Ortega as a person. As a president yes, he had caught my attention. I am a former soldier, I was in the German Armed Forces and I was always interested in the topic of the tanks. I remember that in 2016 there was a shipment of a considerable amount of T-32 tanks to Nicaragua . At that time, I asked myself, for what purpose does a Central American country need this type of weapon? Where were they coming from? I was working in Honduras at that time, I even shared this with Honduran soldiers. I am not going to repeat what they said to me, but it did stand out that there was a certain amount of parallelism between what we experienced now some time ago and what unfortunately culminated in February 2022 in Ukraine, and what was happening in the region.
That is as far as it goes, Daniel Ortega as a president was not on my radar until what happened in April 2018. That is when I began to get a lot more interested because the protests which happened in Nicaragua coincided with many elements of the protests against the Social Security Institute in Guatemala in its time, and also in that of Honduras in its time. Both protests were managed by those governments in an open way. I am not going to describe the governments that were in power in those moments in Central America, that is to say the Guatemalan government, on the one hand, and the Honduran on the other, but the response of the government of Nicaragua was exactly the opposite of what I had seen in Honduras and Guatemala.
I began to see that it was a matter of a regime that had the objective of remaining in power through what political science calls “naked power”, demonstrating pure violence and resources of pure violence which the State can use in a democratic State, at least controlled by other branches, but that in the case of Nicaragua was completely without restraint.
Did the reaction of Ortega-Murillo surprise you?
I had no idea that a government could respond so violently against its own population. It did not surprise me, because to be surprised you need to know that person. I did not know Ortega enough, but, as a State, I did have my previous experiences and comparisons with countries of the neighborhood, and they managed the situation in a different way. In that sense, since I am an academic, I am interested more in the phenomena, I don´t have many feelings in those terms. For me it was an indicator that this regime (Ortega Murillo) yes was different from the others.
What is the opinion you now have about Ortega? Some say that the evil one is his wife, Rosario Murillo and not him so much.
Personally, I do not know either his wife or him. We have the information which we have published about the impact of both from the upper echelon of the State which they would have, and really do have, applying our evidentiary threshold, the highest responsibility for what happened. The quota of who has more or less responsibility, this we will see once, if hopefully in the future, someone devotes themselves to looking for more evidentiary material. That I could not say.
Some Nicaraguans ask themselves that, if Ortega-Murillo have been so violent against the Nicaraguan population, and if the crimes committed are so obvious, why is there no justice yet? How could you explain this to Nicaraguans? Many believe that Ortega and Murillo are going to die without ever facing justice.
The regime in Nicaragua is not the first which has committed atrocities and which, while it is in power, does not pay for its human rights violations. It is typical of regimes that have complete control, and that take their own population hostage, that while this continues happening they can remain in power, and to the extent that they stay in power, they will not pay in any tribunal for the consequences of their actions. But history also shows that once that power is lost, they pay. All the regimes which have fallen after the fall of the Berlin Wall, showed this in one way or another.
In the case of Romania, you know how all this ended, in the execution by firing squad of the head of State (Nicolae Ceausescu) along with his wife (Elena). This is a drastic case not very desired in the Rule of Law. In the case of Germany, the authorities of the former Eastern Germany were responsible for the murders in the Berlin Wall, yes, they were tried, even the highest leaders. In the case of the highest leader (Erich Honecker), who had cancer, he was processed, but he did not pay by being imprisoned because he died. The punishment of these type of people, from the top of the State, who commit these mistakes, is firstly a punishment which shows the population and the international community that this type of behavior and conduct are considered as the worst crimes which a head of State could commit. Here I do not want to characterize the crime of corruption as if equal to the crime of the murder of your own population, but yes there are, in terms of moral quality, if one wants to ponder legal assets or rights or the interests of people, different behaviors, and these behaviors are considered the highest expression of the abuse of power. And that is the objective of justice in that sense. In the sense of the victims, which is a very personal justice, it is different.
Up to now I have given you an explanation in terms of the concept of the State and the concept of society. For the victims justice is very personal and in each case requires that they be notified, processed to the extent possible, and also taken into consideration at the moment of punishing these people. When it is a matter of massive crimes, at a very large scale, it is very difficult to go case by case, but is is not impossible. That is why we have created, in international penal law, categories which go beyond simple murder, what we call “crimes against humanity”, where the victims enter as well as the contextual element, which defines that certain acts are considered as crimes against humanity. A broad and large trial is held. I hope that, at some time in Nicaragua, once the current regime has lost power, and they are going to lose it, this can be done with the highest people responsible who are alive, or dead, because they are already old. Mr Ortega is now at a certain age (79) and his wife (Murillo) as well (74), but yes, their actions will be considered. Then, there is the punishment, I am a Christian, also divine punishment.
Is there some problem in the international organizations, including the UN, which makes it difficult for them to punish these types of situations? The IMF, for example, at some moments seems to speak well of the governmental management of Ortega and Murillo.
If these international organizations did not have any influence, Mr. Ortega would not have withdrawn from these international organizations, and he has withdrawn massively, above all from the organs and organizations of the United Nations. This is already an indicator that that is not true. In the case of the International Monetary Fund, up to now it is still in a good dialogue with the “country team” which the Fund has for evaluating Nicaragua each year, under Article 4 of its Statutes, because it will need a line of credit of the Fund, because even though it does not have it at this time, it is going to need it. And the Monetary Fund also knows that. The Monetary Fund and all the multilateral organizations basically are also a group of selfish interests of States. It would be very naïve to think that they are entities distinct from States which yes formally are distinct, as international entities, but the members of the club are States.
In a club where there are states as diverse as Iran, China, United States, England, Cuba, etc. one can imagine that there is no consensus about different situations in different countries. And that explains in good measure why there is no consensus in multilateral organizations about situations as clear as those of Nicaragua. And Nicaragua is not the only country on the global level, you see cases in Asia and Africa, I am not going to mention the states here, but they are not very different. That is why our work of talking with these multilateral organizations and informing and influencing with our information, which has a relatively high evidentiary standard and is methodologically very solid to be able to be taken into consideration at the moment of making decisions. And in the Monetary Fund, even though it has been criticized a lot, if you read the reports in the last three years, in the fifth pillar of their evaluation, in terms of the Rule of Law, you are going to see between the lines that their tone has sharpened. And this will be reflected, I hope, at the moment in which the government of Nicaragua requests a loan. And how will that be reflected? In the conditions of the disbursement. So you have to be patient and work hard and know the international organizations to understand that they respond to the extent that the interests of the States within the multilateral organizations are reflected.
We have the big advantage of being independent experts, in other words, behind us there is no one, just our own consciences, so what Ariela (Peralta, from Uruguay) and my colleague Reed (Brody of Hungary) and I might say, there is no interest behind it except our interest in justice and democracy and the Rule of Law in Nicaragua.
They just killed a former member of the Army, Roberto Samcam. This crime filled Nicaraguans in exile with fear. What are you working on most recently in terms of the Ortega-Murillo repression?
We are in what could be called the fourth stage of the process of violations. In the first we had the violent repression to the protests, very violent, with all the executions that we have documented. Then, in the second phase we had a more specific repression to ensure the misnamed re-election. A third, in which the most remote possibility of dissenting within the territory of Nicaragua was eliminated, with all the practices which we now know, like taking away citizenship, removing people from the country, not allowing them to return, etc. The fourth phase coincides with what culminated, I should be cautious because it is still not a closed process, supposedly with the death of Doctor Samcam, which in international jargon is called “transnational repression”.
I use this concept in quotes because there is no consensus in international law, in diplomacy, about what this concept represents in terms of a definition, but what are clear are its elements. These elements have various facets which we have already described before the death of Samcam happened, and that is controlling no longer just inside, but also any expression outside the country which might oppose the regime in power in Nicaragua. This is the punishment of relatives of dissidents who are outside the country. This is using systems for international money laundering to financially repress, even take away any economic basis from people who are outside the country, confiscating their pensions, etc. And this, in this fourth phase, I would call an escalation of violence, without exaggeration, toward global violence against any person who might be opposed to this regime. It is not the only country that practices this type of violence, there are other countries as well who do it, and many of the elements which we can see, which we are going to present to the Human Rights Council in September, and in the General Assembly in October, are known. But there is an element which remains a bit unnoticed, but that forms part of this strategy. It is, on the one hand, demonstrating to the international community the contempt toward their institutions, including the United Nations, and on the other hand, using them to commit violations against dissidents.
What are you referring to?
On the one hand it is disparaging the multilateral human rights systems, but on the other hand, using the multilateral police and money laundering cooperation systems to repress the opposition. This is a cynical methodology, using the international system. It is part of a broader concept of exposing dissidents within the international community to violence and a type of expression to the international community of contempt and arrogance of power. This does require a decisive response from the international community, because is goes against the bases of their own work, which is the mutual trust in the States which we use, the instruments of the international community for the good of societies and not for their harm.
Ortega is not just manipulating Nicaragua, but also the international system?
Yes. In issues of money laundering, it is pretty obvious. The poor use of the FATF[2] recommendations to annihilate civil society organizations and filter information in money laundering control systems to financially incapacitate dissidents, is a good example. And we have sufficient evidence about this.
As an investigator, have you been able to visit Nicaragua?
No. We have requested on several occasions access to the country, but the State of Nicaragua has blocked our access to the territory. We are not the only ones. The great majority of our colleagues, from other independent mechanisms of human rights investigations, have not had access to the territory either. Nicaragua is not the only State which behaves in this way. The case of Myanmar is the same, the case of Syria, until the fall of the regime, was the same.
How difficult has it been to investigate and document the regime? Has the fact that many Nicaraguans are outside of Nicaragua had an impact?
It has an impact, but it does not make it impossible. And to the extent that the State exports their violence outside the country, it is made easier. For one simple reason, as you just said, the victims are outside the country. And our sources are the victims. But to the extent that the regime exports its violence and consolidates its complete control in the territory, it is also going to export people from within the system who are very considerable sources for our work.
They are imprisoning or persecuting people who have been important to them, who have been their support, who form part of their circuit like Comandante Bayardo Arce, as former military. Are you taking them into account as well? Are they victims as well? How are you addressing this issue?
We do not make a distinction, in terms of human rights, over the fact that a person themself has committed human rights violations. This does not justify nor make us not be concerned about them and their suffering as well. So it is that we take into account people who have not committed any violation in the course of their lives, as well as people who could have a certain amount of responsibility, and that is also very typical. In other words, many regimes that fall normally have many repentant perpetrators who later talk. And not just from a low level, but also in many cases from higher levels. This is important for the recovery of the history of why what happened did happen.
Personal Plane
Jan-Michael Simon was born in Germany in 1967 and is married and has children, although he prefers to not to into his family life.
Like many youth of his generation, who grew up before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he had to do military service because it was obligatory in Germany at the time of the Cold War..
Nevertheless, later Simon studied law in Bonn, a city which was the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany (Western Germany) from 1949 to 1990.
Currently he is an expert in comparative penal law, criminal policy and international law. He began his career as an independent expert of the UN in 1997 in Guatemala.
[1] Refers to the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights which was initially charged with investigating the government response to the April 2018 uprisings.
[2] FATF= Financial Action Task Force which is the intergovernmental body to fight money and asset laundering and financing for terrorism.
