Felix Maradiaga

Félix Maradiaga: the political scientist imprisoned for believing in free elections

Throughout his professional life, Félix Maradiaga, 45, has visited almost every university in Nicaragua promoting a culture of non-violence among young people, quite a feat in a volatile country like Nicaragua.

His efforts were not to the liking of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo since, when the protests broke out in April 2018, they made Félix a target for paramilitaries and Sandinista fanatics to persecute and beat him.

The attacks against Maradiaga intensified and despite this he continued to speak out in favor of non-violence as the only way out of the crisis that had broken out in the country. Bearing this in mind, Félix Maradiaga, who suffered constant sieges at his house and restrictions on moving freely imposed by the regime’s police, decided to announce that he was running for president in the November 2021 elections.

Maradiaga is a political scientist, an academic, he was director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policies (IEEPP), and he felt that he had the capacity to govern a country that, by 2021, had already been plunged into a political, social and economic crisis for 3 years.

The announcement was not to the liking of the regime. On June 8, 2021, he was summoned to testify at the Public Ministry without knowing the causes of the prosecutorial appeal, the same day when he left the Public Ministry, the Ortega police illegally and violently detained him, he faced a trial, where he was imposed a sentence of 13 years in prison for considering that he committed the crimes of “undermining national integrity” and “propagation of false news through information and communication technologies”. The reprisals did not end there, like the other people who aspired to the presidential chair, they also disqualified him from holding any public office.

In prison Félix Maradiaga still dreams of a free Nicaragua, but the regime has decided to torture him with daily interrogations, they have deprived him of regular visits from his relatives and he has not been able to see his wife, Berta Valle, who had to go into exile so as not to be caught too.

It is worrying that Félix has lost more than 50 pounds in weight and the regime continues to fail to comply with the provisional measures granted by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in which it has been ordered that he be released immediately, considering that it is an arbitrary detention. Félix suffers cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and while he is deprived of liberty, the State must guarantee access to health services and medicines that it has failed to comply with up to now.

Felix Maradiaga did not commit any crime. He only wanted to teach Nicaragua that violence is not the way to resolve conflicts.

Freedom for Felix Maradiaga!

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