The European Union on Monday urged the government of Daniel Ortega to release “immediately” all political prisonerswhose detention and treatment he considers violate international human rights standards and the Nicaraguan Constitution.
“We hope that the Nicaraguan government immediately and unconditionally releases all political prisoners and annuls all legal proceedings against them, including their sentences,” a spokesman for the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, said in a statement.
The EU statement comes after, in recent weeks, Nicaraguan courts have handed down guilty sentences and harsh sentences to political prisoners, after trials behind closed doors.
“The judges and prosecutors of these trials have systematically violated due process and the Nicaraguan criminal code itself,” said the spokesman, who pointed out that the presumption of innocence was violated by the Prosecutor’s Office in a public note in which it described the detainees as “criminals” and “delinquents”.
According to the opposition, There are more than 170 political prisoners in the jails of the Central American country. Many of them have been held incommunicado for more than eight months, some of them face daily interrogations and have only seen their families on a few occasions, which poses “a real risk to the physical and mental integrity of prisoners and can constitute cruel treatment, inhuman and degrading, or even torture”.
“We note that since the death in detention of Hugo Torres on February 12, some elderly and sick detainees have been assigned to house arrest, but this can only be a first step,” he said, referring to the case of the historic Sandinista combatant who died at 73 years after being transferred from a dungeon to a hospital in police custody.
Nicaragua, another country in the region with a political leader based on contested elections
The spokesman stated that since 2018 Ortega has carried out a systematic imprisonment, harassment and intimidation of presidential candidates, political, student and peasant leaders, as well as journalists, human rights defenders and business representatives.
“The European Union will continue to closely monitor the situation and support the people of Nicaragua in their legitimate aspiration to democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law,” he concluded. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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