Juan Sebastián Chamorro

A birthday behind bars of injustice

On February 23, 2022, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, 51 years old, spent, for the first time in his life, a solitary birthday behind the bars of Ortega injustice in Nicaragua. Alone, away from his family and without the possibility of sharing with his own, as he would have wanted.

Daniel Ortega’s regime captured him on June 8, 2021, through an illegal search and without a judicial arrest warrant, just a few months after he announced his intention to participate as a presidential candidate in the November elections of that year. After a process in which all due process guarantees were violated, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for conspiracy and undermining national integrity to prevent him from holding public office.

Chamorro, former Director of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES), and former Executive Director of the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, suffered constant harassment from the Ortega police, a repressive arm that prevented him from leaving his house and his free movement. For several months he was followed when he made use of his right to free movement, even when he attended mass, went to get a haircut or attended some family activity.

The police complex, “Evaristo Vásquez”, where the regime keeps him imprisoned, also served as a courtroom, showing the submission of the judicial authorities to the Police and President Ortega. Held in those cells, little by little his health has deteriorated to the point that he has lost considerable weight and he remains incommunicado without knowing what happens outside or in the cells of the other political prisoners.

The authorities have refused to allow his wife and daughter, who had to go into exile, to communicate with him by phone or even letters that the police have refused to receive.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights granted him provisional measures, considering that his detention is arbitrary and that he suffers cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Court has required the State to guarantee access to health services and medicines while he is deprived of liberty, a resolution that the regime has failed to comply with.

Freedom for Juan Sebastián Chamorro!

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