Abdul Montoya

“Daniel Ortega came out worse than Somoza (…) He is not a revolutionary, he is not a socialist,” Abdul Montoya told the newspaper La Prensa on June 11, 2019, the same day he was released after spending 10 months in prison, after his former Sandinista Front party colleagues in the department of Matagalpa accused him of the murder of opposition protester Lenín Díaz Mendiola. 

In April 2018, Abdul went out to demonstrate in the streets outraged by the violence that the Ortega-Murillo regime was exercising against senior citizens protesting in  Matagalpa against Social Security reforms. 

Lenín Díaz was a customer of Montoya’s store; they knew each other from the same city and he lost his life when Sandinista sympathizers fired guns at a citizens’ demonstration in the streets of Matagalpa. The crime was attributed to Abdul.

Montoya assured, in the same interview he gave to the newspaper La Prensa, that his participation in the marches and his comments against the regime provoked Sandinista Front sympathizers to visit him at his home to “convince” him not to continue criticizing the party. 

As a result, his family denounced his imprisonment as arbitrary and a reprisal by the regime for having left the Sandinista Front. Abdul was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the crimes of murder, terrorism and organized crime, a sentence he would not even have lived out to serve, given that he is a person already over 60 years old. 

He was released in 2019 following the approval of the Amnesty Law and was recaptured on April 3, 2023, on charges of illegal possession of weapons. The judge handling the case is Diana Isabel Jarquín, a local judge in Matagalpa, daughter of Francisco Jarquín, Abdul’s former comrade in the insurrection against Somoza. 

According to Confidencial, Montoya was living a clandestine life before he was recaptured and the authorities took him off a bus in which he was traveling. When they searched him they found money and a list of medicines he was going to buy. 

His capture was not an isolated event; he was part of a group of 30 people who were besieged and imprisoned by the Ortega-Murillo regime during the religious commemoration of Holy Week. 

In the absence of evidence against him, the same media reported that a false profile was created on Facebook, five days after being imprisoned, in the name of Montoya calling on the population to rise up against the Ortega-Murillo regime.

The Ortega-Murillo regime continued to violate due process and Abdul was informed, through a video call, that he had been sentenced to 2 years in prison for cybercrimes, 5 years for undermining national integrity, and 15 years for terrorism to a total of 23 years that Abdul will have to spend for crimes he did not commit.

Abdul’s life is at risk, since he has also lost about 20 pounds in weight since he was captured since he would rather not to eat because in the La Modelo prison, where he is held, he has been served food in bad state, with cockroaches, and worms.

As happened with other people deprived of liberty for political reasons, the regime does not allow him to sunbathe, which has caused him to become paler and his skin to look damaged.

For all the irregularities that occurred during Montoya’s detention and his critical position against the Ortega-Murillo regime, Abdul is a person deprived of liberty for political reasons unjustly imprisoned in Nicaragua.

Freedom for Abdul Montoya! 

We demand that the Ortega-Murillo regime Free Nicas Now!