Catalino Leo Cárcamo

Sources assure that Leo would not have been released in December 2024 since he is suffering from severe depression and has lost his memory.

On November 22, 2024, Catalino Leo Cárcamo (66), a retired and much-loved journalist in the city of León, was detained by state agents. Since then, people close to Leo – as he is popularly known – have requested information from the authorities about his whereabouts and condition, without obtaining any response.

Leo Cárcamo has been the beneficiary of precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) since 2018 due to the risk he was facing at the time in his capacity as Head of the Press Department of Radio Darío.

The IACHR when requesting provisional measures to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on January 2, 2025, considered Mr. Cárcamo’s situation particularly worrisome, considering that his whereabouts are unknown after his detention in November 2024. In addition to the above, the beneficiary is an elderly person and suffers from several diseases: hypertension and diabetes, among others, which increases his risk in the eventual conditions of detention that he would be facing in prison, similar to the rest of the persons deprived of liberty in Nicaragua.

In January 2019, months after the arson attack by members of the Sandinista Front that destroyed the facilities of Radio Darío, Leo Cárcamo was arrested on a street in León by Commissioner Fidel Domínguez, who took it upon himself to torture him with blows, kicks and insults to then exhibit him naked in front of police officers from the department who were gathered.

Cárcamo, who with much effort managed to make his way in journalism, worked at Radio Darío for more than 30 years, traveling more than thirty kilometers by bus to reach the radio station’s facilities in the city of León, since he lived in the municipality of La Paz Centro, taking care of his mother.

Sources assure that Leo would not have been released in December 2024 since he is suffering from severe depression and has lost his memory.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights granted him provisional measures on January 9, 2025, requiring the State to provide him with immediate access to physical and mental health services, medication and adequate food. On March 27 of the same year, the Court issued a resolution ordering the State to release him immediately. The State has not complied with the Court’s order.

Where is Leo Cárcamo?

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