Evelyn Pinto

20 police officers to arrest human rights defender Evelyn Pinto

On November 6, 2021, on the eve of the elections in which Daniel Ortega re-elected himself for a fourth consecutive term, eliminating months in advance any possibility of electoral competition, Evelyn Pinto was arrested by at least 20 police officers.

Evelyn, 63 years old, is recognized in Nicaragua for her tireless struggle for the respect of human rights and her activity was criminalized in a trial so crude that the human rights defender with an unblemished life trajectory faced her executioners saying: “You are liars”.

The expression came from her soul because the witnesses used by the Prosecutor’s Office to accuse her were police officers who contradicted themselves time and again in their stories. In spite of this, Judge Irma Laguna sentenced her to 8 years in prison: 5 for undermining national integrity and 3 for spreading false news.

Among the irregularities observed in the process is that the police officers, despite having said that they had been watching her for months, did not know how to describe Evelyn’s home and also took a video where she was participating in an internal election of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), now Unamos. That was in 2017.

As of today, Evelyn has been held in a cell in La Esperanza women’s prison for more than 7 months. She has chronic conditions that merit timely and quality medical attention. Her life is at risk if she does not receive adequate care.

Aware of this and that her health has seriously deteriorated, the IACHR has expressed concern, recalling that she is a cancer survivor, suffers from hypertension and chronic renal insufficiency.

Freedom for Evelyn Pinto!

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