Alex Hernández

Alex Hernández, the political prisoner who dreams of wearing blue and white again

Alex Hernández Quintanilla, 32 years old, is originally from Catarina, Masaya. He is the third of five siblings and lost his parents when he was very young. He wanted to become a priest but after two years he decided to return to being a layman. Alex joined the civic protests in 2018 and was a founding leader of the April 19 Movement of Catarina.

Alex Hernandez lost his means of income; he suffered siege and repression, while the population organized to safeguard his life and that of the other inhabitants of the area in the face of repression by the police and parastatal elements.

He survived the clean-up operation on July 15, 2018, defending himself with stones from AK 47 gunfire. He was kidnapped on September 23, 2018 and released in March 2019. He subsequently had to go into exile in Costa Rica for a few months, to protect his freedom and personal integrity. He returned to Nicaragua, despite the lack of adequate socio-political conditions and joined the Blue and White Unity (UNAB) of which, at the time of his arrest, he was a member of its Political Council, and the Union of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of Nicaragua (UPPN).

Alex participated in express pickets civically demanding the release of political prisoners, actively assumed the rotating coordination of the Territorial Organization Commission of the National Coalition where he always promoted a spirit of unity in the members of the opposition.

Since 2019, he promoted a protest initiative in which people went out to launch blue and white balloons, the colors of the national flag, to the streets of Catarina. Since the Blue and White Unity he has longed for the unity of all Nicaraguans and dreams of wearing blue and white again.

On August 24, 2021 Alex was arbitrarily detained by the police when he was entering a dining room in Managua, being physically assaulted and thrown into a police patrol, without any information about his whereabouts for 10 days, which constitutes an enforced disappearance.

Alex Hernandez, has been prosecuted and convicted by the co-opted criminal justice system formed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary. One of the pieces of evidence used by the Public Prosecutor’s Office was a video that Hernandez recorded prior to his arrest. In a process full of nullities, he was unjustly convicted by Judge Felix Salmeron, for the crime of conspiracy to commit undermining national integrity as provided in Law 1055. Alex is serving an unjust sentence of 10 years in prison and disqualification to hold public office and continues to be deprived of his liberty in the jails of the Dirección de Auxilio Judicial.

Freedom for Alex Hernandez! 

We demand to the Ortega-Murillo regime: Free Nicas Now!