and refuses to release his body to his family
Nancy Elizabeth Henriquez, former political prisoner and alternate Yatama legislator, holds the hand of Indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera, who lies bedridden in a Managua hospital. | Photo: Taken from El 19 Digital
He died on May 30 at 8:30 p.m. His body remains imprisoned: the dictatorship refuses to release it to his family for burial in Sandy Bay, according to his wishes.
HAVANA TIMES – Miskitu leader and national president of the Indigenous party Yatama, Brooklyn Rivera Bryan, died on May 30, 2026, at 8:30 p.m. at the age of 73, after more than 970 days of illegal detention, according to sources at Fernando Velez Paiz Hospital, where he had been hospitalized under the custody of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The dictatorship has not officially announced the Indigenous leader’s death and continues to keep his body under police custody. Thus, even in death, Brooklyn Rivera remains a prisoner under police guard.
Sources close to Yatama say the regime is refusing to release Rivera’s body to his family, who wish to honor the Indigenous leader’s desire to be buried in Lidaukra, Sandy Bay, where his mother is buried.
Rivera is the seventh political prisoner to die in the custody of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, which concealed the severity of his health condition despite repeated requests for “proof of life” from his relatives and the international community.
The regime broke its silence regarding the Indigenous leader and political prisoner’s condition only on May 27, 2026, through an alarming statement that revealed the irreversible deterioration of his health after nearly three years of forced disappearance.
Rivera was arbitrarily detained on September 29, 2023, when the dictatorship lured him to his home in Bilwi, the capital of Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean region, after he had spent some time outside the country.
The regime’s statement had detailed his critical health condition in what appeared to be an attempt to distance itself from responsibility ahead of an imminent fatal outcome.
Brooklyn Rivera, Seventh Political Prisoner to Die in Custody
The belated showing of the prisoner immediately recalled the tragic pattern that preceded the deaths in state custody of fellow political prisoners Hugo Torres Jimenez, the historic guerrilla commander, in February 2022, and Humberto Ortega Saavedra, retired Army general and brother of dictator Daniel Ortega, in September 2024.
Other political prisoners who died in state custody include Carazo opposition activist Mauricio Alonso Petri and jurist Carlos Cardenas Zepeda, who died less than a week apart following their arrests in August 2025.
Also on the list are attorney Santos Flores, who had denounced Daniel Ortega for sexually abusing his underage sister and died under suspicious circumstances in prison in November 2021, and Nicaraguan-US American Eddy Montes, who was killed by a prison officer in a cell at La Modelo prison on May 16, 2019.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.