Relatives of political prisoners demand proof of life and their immediate release
In La Prensa, August 30, 2025
The demand emerged amid the fear that families face after the recent cases in which two political prisoners were delivered lifeless in the last five days.
On the International Day for the Victims of Forced Disappearances relatives of political prisoners in Nicaragua demanded proof of life of their relatives and their immediate release from the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The demand emerged amid the fear that families face after the recent cases in which two prisoners of conscience were delivered lifeless in the last five days.
On August 25, the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) delivered lifeless the political prisoner Mauricio Alonso, 64 years of age, and this Friday August 29th the body of Carlos Cárdenas Zepeda was also turned over to his relatives. He was a lawyer[1] who was abducted 15 days before.
“We demand that they show us they are alive and release them immediately,” stated Sadie Rivas, the daughter of political prisoner and former Captain Aníbal Rivas Reed, during a press conference organized by the Nicaragua Never More Human Rights Collective (Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más).
On his part, Adolfo Hurtado, the brother of Alejandro Hurtado disappeared since January, emphasized that “we want to know where they are, how they are doing, we want to see them. We want to know whether they are alive.”
The relatives and human rights organizations denounced that prisoners of conscience remain in total isolation and that the authorities of the Penitentiary System refuse visits, phone calls and access to medicine, which increases concern about their physical integrity.
Jails, “thresholds to death”
During the press conference The Nicaragua Never More Human Rights Collective, the Legal Defense Unit (UDJ), and Blue and White Monitor, accompanied by the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) denounced that in the last week the Ortega regime has “crossed an intolerable red line.”
Claudia Pineda of the UDJ denounced that the recent deaths of the two prisoners of conscience “confirms what we have been denouncing, the jails of the regime have been turned into thresholds to death.”
She also revealed that the families “face double torture, the absence of their loved ones and institutional harassment when they try to obtain information. Today we relatives of political prisoners denounce that every day of arbitrary confinement is a risk of death.”
For his part, Salvador Marenco, lawyer of the Nicaragua Never More Collective, pointed out that “the forced disappearances of people are added to the list of the crimes against humanity committed by the regime, crimes which have no statutes of limitations and crimes which in a free Nicaragua will have to bring to trial all these perpetrators, state and para-state agents who have participated in this system.”
At the same time, he stated that they have documented more than 240 cases of torture survivors who also were victims of temporary forced disappearances. “Forced disappearances have become a terror policy of the regime which has been exacerbated this year with the recent raids,” he underlined.
Claudia Paz y Paz of CEJIL stated that “it is completely unacceptable these violations of the right to life but also added to the violations of freedom and physical integrity (…). We add our voices to demand that they immediately allow access to their families and their lawyers, to these people who remain disappeared, and we also demand of the state of Nicaragua their immediate release.”
“We live with the angst of not knowing where they are”
Saide Rivas read a press release in the name of the relatives of political prisoners in which they state that for months, dozens of homes “we live with the permanent anguish of not knowing where our loved ones are, nor in what conditions they are in.”
Likewise, they condemned the cases of the two prisoners of conscience who were delivered lifeless to their families. “We absolutely refuse to normalize this practice, each death under state custody is a political assassination. The lives of our relatives are at continuous risk, and the official silence is nothing more than a confirmation of the cruelty with which this regime acts,” she stated.
Then she immediately stated that “we demand the immediate and unconditional release of all the political prisoners of Nicaragua and the appearance alive of all those forcibly disappeared.”
Adolfo Hurtado denounced that as a family they have not gotten a response of where nor how he is. “There is no other path than denouncement, silence is not an alternative (…) it must be denounced, we are not going to stop until they turn him over to us,” he insisted.
Rosa Ruíz, the mother of Doctor Yerri Gustavo Estrada Ruíz, arrested by the Police of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship this past August 13 at the Japanese Friendship Hospital of Granada, said that recent cases “have been very alarming, of greater concern because it is not known where they are (…) it is urgent that countries of the world support us, it is not possible that they do not show us that they are alive, there is an enormous silence.”
Ruíz said that she has requested support from the Government of Costa Rica to obtain information about her son, who was born on Costa Rican soil. “The uncertainty only makes me recall how Somoza´s Guard would come to dump the bodies, now it terrifies me to think that my son is going to be one of those people who they come to deliver to me, but lifeless,” she stated.
She indicated that “we demand that they show them to us and that they release them.” Francisco Ortiz, the father of Luis Francisco Ortiz, detained in Masaya this past August 13th, also demanded proof of life and the release of his son and all the political prisoners.
“We family members are being persecuted. Today our families are broken thanks to the regime of Nicaragua, it is enough now, we hope that there are no more deaths,” said Ortiz.
Ortiz as well as Ruíz insisted in the fact that the dictatorship does not give an official response about where their sons are, but that extra officially they know that they are detained in the Evaristo Vázquez Judicial Support Office, better known as El Chipote, where they “are being tortured.”
[1] He was the legal advisor to the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, and accompanied the Bishops conference in the National Dialogue which Ortega requested the Bishops to arrange in May 2018.
