In La Prensa, April 8, 2025
The leaflets distributed by State institutions are used as an excuse to do house to house visits and gather information about “people of interest”.
The report of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua of the United Nations Organization (GHREN) revealed, since the protests which exploded in April 2018, how the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo built a complex surveillance system to persecute dissidents and maintain control, even within the very apparatuses of the dictatorship.
In this surveillance network GHREN confirmed the participation of the Army of Nicaragua, National Police, Ministry of the Interior (MINT), Ministry of Health (MINSA), Ministry of Youth (MINJUVE), Attorney General of the Republic (PGR), the Nicaraguan Telecommunications and Mail Institute (Telcor) and the municipal governments.
The report points out that the Police have at least two units of intelligence and espionage which are not regulated by law, which are used to persecute dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists and critics of the regime.
This past April 3 GHREN presented a new report in which it provided 54 names of officials responsible for committing serious crimes since the protests of April 2018.
A strategy of Wendy Morales
According to GHREN, in terms of the confiscations, the spokesperson for the dictatorship, Rosario Murillo, assigned to the Attorney General of the Republic, Wendy Morales, the task of organizing house to house visits and schools to distribute the leaflets which the regime gave out on different topics, and which have been widely questioned over their political slant in favor of the government.
These leaflets, prepared by a commission composed of MINSA, MINED, the Human Rights ombudsperson, the Ministry of Women, and MINJUVE, under the coordination of the PGR, “they are a pretext for making house to house visits to gather information,” points out the report.
“The visits are carried out with people who are part of these institutions, members of the Sandinista Youth and political secretaries. These people have a list of the so-called “people of interest”, prepared by Fidel Antonio Moreno Briones, a list which is shared with the Prosecutor and whose objective is to know who live in the home and who owns the property,” points out GHREN.
If the home is in the name of a person of interest, the property is intervened later on, without any procedure provided by law or any compensation.
The role of the Police
The Office of the Deputy Director General of Police Investigation and Intelligence of the National Police plays a key role in the management of information and intelligence. Under its structure operate different specialized offices, among them: the Office of Police Intelligence, Office of Economic Investigations, Office of Anti-narcotics, Office of Judicial Support, the Counterintelligence Office and the Laboratory and Forensic Office.
The report points out that since 2018 these units have been used to gather information about dissidents or people considered to be such, for the purpose of surveilling them, arresting them, and building judicial cases against them, in coordination with the Public Ministry and the judicial branch.
It also reveals that Marenco Corea and his successor, Zhukov Serrano, coordinated the Center for Police Information and Intelligence (CIIP), a body not contemplated in the law, created prior to 2018, which received information from different specialties of the Police. According to the report, dissidents were assigned monitors from this unit to always know their location.
The “H office”
The report confirmed the existence of a second unit known as the “Operative Technical Department” or “H”, which is not regulated by law and operates clandestinely to monitor, follow up on dissidents, secretly film them, tap their phone calls and secretly search homes, among other things.
“It has been reported that this Department functions under the façade of companies providing services like telephone, potable water, gas, electric, messaging, insurance, fumigation, food delivery, or cleaning services, among others. To carry out their operations it has been reported that the Department rents out temporary properties,” points out GHREN.
In addition, the report indicates that this office arbitrarily arrested dissidents who were taken to clandestine houses, where they were interrogated and tortured.
The control of the municipal governments and the FSLN
In the case of the municipal governments, they each have computer centers which have been installed, where information about the citizenry is processed. That capacity was expanded after the municipal elections in November 2022, when the Ortega-Murillo regime assigned all the municipal governments of the country to the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN), the party of the dictatorship.
GHREN revealed that within the Sandinista Front the political secretaries are the principal figures in terms of threats, surveillance and control of dissidents or those perceived as such, as well as their relatives. These actors identify the public officials and citizens to investigate, which ensures that the surveillance is extended at all levels, from the Central Government to the municipal governments and other civil and private sectors.
Parallel espionage structures
GHREN points out that, after the arrival of Daniel Ortega to power in 2007, he created a parallel intelligence structures directed by the presidential security and intelligence advisor, Nestor Moncada Lau.
The report documents that, starting in 2018, these structures were subordinated to an intelligence organizations set up to identify dissidents, determine their geolocation, surveil them, harass them and arrest them.
This team was coordinated by Nestor Moncada Lau, along with Adolfo Joel Marenco Corea, from the Office of the Deputy General Director of Police Investigation and Intelligence, and Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa, Vice Minister of the Ministry of the Interior, among others. All of them work under the direct orders of President Ortega and Vice President Murillo. These structures reflect the order issued by Murillo to the National Police in April 2023, according to which “there cannot be a fly moving without her knowledge.”
In addition, the report points out that since 2018 the National Intelligence Committee began to operate, as an inorganic structure in which representatives of security institutions participate, like the Army, Police, Ministry of the Interior, Financial Analysis Unit (UAF), among others.
The role of Telcor
The report reveals that Telcor and its general director since 2019, Nahima Janett Díaz, the daughter of the head of the Police, Francisco Díaz, were responsible for the interception of communications.
GHREN points out that sources revealed that the Police could obtain telecommunications interventions without the need for a judicial order, even prior to 2018, from the headquarters of Telcor. During and after the social uprising of 2018, Telcor strengthened the work team located in Telcor and in the House of the People (previously the Presidential building), while another team was installed in the sector of El Carmen, where technological and personnel teams were installed to control and leak information from social networks, calls and videocalls.
According to GHREN, since before 2018 the regime pressured a telecommunications company to assign telephone lines to the Government for its use, which were later assigned to State workers and members of the FSLN, which allowed the regime to exercise greater control over the communications of their officials.
