{"id":400470,"date":"2026-01-11T05:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/400470\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:09:20","slug":"nicaraguas-government-says-its-freeing-detainees-after-pressure-from-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/400470\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicaragua\u2019s government says it\u2019s freeing detainees after pressure from the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEXICO CITY (AP) \u2014 Nicaragua\u2019s<\/a> Interior Ministry said Saturday the country would release dozens of prisoners, as the United States ramped up pressure on leftist President Daniel Ortega<\/a>a week after it ousted<\/a> former Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua said Venezuela had taken an important step toward peace by releasing what it described as \u201cpolitical prisoners.\u201d But it lamented that in Nicaragua, \u201cmore than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that \u201cdozens of people who were in the National Penitentiary System are returning to their homes and families.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear who was freed and under what conditions. Nicaragua\u2019s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The government has been carrying out an ongoing crackdown since mass social protests in 2018, that were violently repressed.<\/p>\n

Nicaragua\u2019s government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and more, then exiled them, stripping hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. Since 2018, it has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. Nicaragua\u2019s government<\/a> often accused critics and opponents of plotting against the government.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned political opponents, critics and activists. It stripped them of Nicaraguan citizenship<\/a> and sent them to other countries like the U.S. and Guatemala. Observers have called it an effort to wash its hands of its opposition and offset international human rights criticism. Many of those Nicaraguans were forced into a situation of “statelessness.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Saturday on X, the U.S. State Department\u2019s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs again slammed Nicaragua\u2019s government. \u201cNicaraguans voted for a president in 2006, not for an illegitimate lifelong dynasty,\u201d it said. \u201cRewriting the Constitution and crushing dissent will not erase the Nicaraguans\u2019 aspirations to live free from tyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danny Ram\u00edrez-Ay\u00e9rdiz, executive-secretary of the Nicaraguan human rights organization CADILH, said he had mixed feelings about the releases announced Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, I\u2019m glad. All political prisoners suffer some form of torture. But on the other hand, I know these people will continue to be harassed, surveilled and monitored by the police, and so will their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ram\u00edrez-Ay\u00e9rdiz said the liberation of the prisoners is a response to pressure exerted by the United States. \u201cThere is surely a great deal of fear within the regime that the U.S. might completely dismantle it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEXICO CITY (AP) \u2014 Nicaragua\u2019s Interior Ministry said Saturday the country would release dozens of prisoners, as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,2420,67024,193313,3,39713,193312,44998,48390,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-400470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-government","10":"tag-interior-ministry","11":"tag-national-penitentiary-system","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-nicaragua","14":"tag-political-prisoners","15":"tag-the-government","16":"tag-u-s-embassy","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}