Manuel Urbina Lara

The lawyer who is now a person deprived of his liberty for political reasons

From a very young age, lawyer José Manuel Urbina Lara considered himself “anti-Sandinista” and led groups of young people who protested against compulsory military service. After being arrested several times for opposing military service, he moved to Costa Rica, where he finished studying law, became a Costa Rican citizen and joined the Nicaraguan Resistance.

His sister Amada Urbina, in an interview for Revista Magazine, related that her family was liberal and this political stance brought about the detention of several members of her family on more than one occasion. Now, more than 40 years after the overthrow of Anastasio Somoza’s government, Urbina Lara is deprived of liberty for political reasons in the prison known as “La Modelo” and is sentenced to four years in prison for reckless homicide.

On January 24, 2021, the van Urbina Lara was driving crashed while traveling to Jinotega. Also in the vehicle was José Antonio Rizo, who lost his life. Urbina was arrested and Rizo’s family wanted to reach a mediation, since the lawyer was in a delicate condition, he had fractures in his legs, in his rib, a hematoma in his head, and Nicaraguan legislation allows that those responsible for these types of accidents can recover their freedom by reaching an agreement with the victim’s relatives; however the Prosecutor’s Office did not allow it. “It is a political revenge”, declared the Urbina Lara family.

Likewise, in February 2021, the local criminal judge of Jinotega, Diana Isabel Jarquín, ordered his freedom in a preliminary hearing, but hours later revoked this order. For his son, Erick Urbina, these irregularities are further proof that “the Justice System in this country (referring to Nicaragua) is in shambles… there is no real justice”.

Urbina Lara remained for more than a year in the Penitentiary System of Waswalí, Matagalpa. In April of this year, he began a hunger strike as an act of protest against the cruel, inhumane and degrading conditions in which the inmates are held. On April 27, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) denounced that lawyer Urbina Lara was missing after agents of the Directorate of Special Police Operations (DOEP) took him from his cell on April 26 to an unknown location, which turned out to be La Modelo prison in Tipitapa.

On December 31, 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a resolution in which it granted precautionary measures in favor of Urbina Lara, after considering that he is in a serious and urgent situation of risk of irreparable harm to his rights due to the “severe conditions of detention, under which he has been subjected to threats and violence” and his serious health condition, “without receiving timely medical attention”.

Given the lack of response from the State regarding the precautionary measures granted by the IACHR in his favor and taking into account the extreme gravity and urgency of irreparable harm to his rights, on September 7, 2022, the IACHR requested that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights grant Provisional Measures in his favor and that of his family.

On October 4, 2022, the Court granted provisional measures in his favor. The Court considered that the detention suffered, as well as the criminal proceedings against him, evidenced a process of harassment and criminalization of people who identify themselves in opposition to the current government of Nicaragua.

Freedom for José Manuel Urbina Lara!

We demand that the Ortega-Murillo regime: ¡NicasLibresYa!