Kaled Antonio Toruño Maradiaga

Kaled Antonio Toruño Maradiaga, the political activist and law student, whose academic record was erased

Kaled Toruño Mariadaga, 43, is the father of a child. Originally from Nagarote, León, he has worked as an ice cream vendor, newspaper vendor, and bicycle taxi driver.

He is a Law graduate, however the academic record of his grades was erased at UNAN-MANAGUA. Kaled, since April 2018, has demanded justice and freedom for Nicaragua from his territorial activism.

Kaled has been a political activist since 2012. As a member of the Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth, he promoted a hunger strike in front of the departmental Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) of Estelí, demanding the change of officials in power of that State and also frequently attended Wednesday protest in front of the CSE in Managua, in 2014

On that occasion, Kaled and the other participants in the Hunger Strike affirmed that in the name of civil society they repudiated the electoral fraud of November 2011 and demanded the dismissal of the President of the Supreme Electoral Council and the rest of the magistrates of that Power of State.

He was captured on August 5, 2018 by paramilitaries acting together with militants from the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

He disappeared for 8 days and on August 13 he was accused in the Second Criminal District Court of León, being accused by the Public Ministry for the alleged crime of aggravated robbery and after a process in which the guarantees of due process were violated, he was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months in prison by Judge Aleyda García Carrillo. Kaled, was released on April 16, 2019, under the family coexistence regime.

Kaled was recaptured on October 16, 2020 by the police after a search without a warrant while he was having lunch at his house in Nagarote. He was brutally beaten and subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Public Ministry accused him in a second arbitrary criminal proceeding for the crimes of internal trafficking of narcotics, psychotropics and other controlled substances, illegal carrying of firearms, manufacture or possession and use of restricted weapons.

He was sentenced in the Fifth Criminal District Court of Managua, by Judge Félix Ernesto Salmerón, to 20 years in prison and to pay a fine of 64,038 cordobas despite the existence of contradictory evidence in which the policemen testified that they found him on the street, when in reality they had carried out an illegal search of his home, where he was arrested.

He is currently in the Jorge Navarro Penitentiary System, known as “La Modelo” in punishment cell 4B-18, where he suffers from overcrowded conditions in a cell with a capacity for 4 people in which 20 people are currently detained. Due to the economic difficulties in which his family finds itself, they cannot attend visits to the penitentiary center or deliver packages.

Freedom for Kaled Toruño!

We demand from the Ortega regime: Free Nicas Now!