Deadly detentions in Nicaragua: Another opponent dies in custody of Ortega-Murillo regime

Carlos Cárdenas Zepeda was arrested for the second time on August 19, 2025, at his home in Managua. Police officers from the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo detained him on both occasions for political reasons, specifically for being the legal advisor to the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference, a collegiate body made up of several Catholic bishops hated by the co-presidential couple. His family did not know where he had been taken, and they were in a state of anxiety for 12 days, until Saturday, August 30, when they received a fateful call: officials from the Sandinista administration summoned them to identify his body.

Less than a week earlier, the family of political prisoner Mauricio Alonso Petri suffered the same fate. They received a call from the Institute of Forensic Medicine informing them that, after 38 days of enforced disappearance, the 64-year-old’s body lay in the morgue, ready for immediate identification and burial, surrounded by a police contingent armed with assault rifles.

The deaths of Cárdenas Zepeda and Alonso Petri are the lethal result of a repressive tactic that is not new, but that since July has been used against all opponents detained by officers loyal to the Ortega-Murillo regime: short- and long-term forced disappearances. Before July 19, when the co-presidents commemorated the 46th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, in the midst of a political period headed toward family succession led by Murillo, arrest raids were unleashed in different departments of Nicaragua that persisted as of the publication of this article.

The Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners recorded at least 33 arrests during that period, including five entire families who were “kidnapped” by officers. These individuals are subject to enforced disappearance because authorities refuse to provide information to their families and close friends about their whereabouts or health status. Prominent among these families is a 12-year-old girl who was arrested along with her parents in the city of Jinotepe, where the regime confiscated the Colegio San José school on August 12. The girl was a student at the school, and her father was a member of its board of directors.

The families of these people are terrified and don’t dare to report the incidents because they’ve also been threatened with imprisonment. “They never present a search warrant and they don’t care if there are minors or elderly people at the kidnapping scene. When a family member tries to intervene, they threaten that they’ll be taken away as well. Just like the searchers, they’re threatened that if they keep asking questions, they’ll be imprisoned,” says a source close to the victims.

However, the deaths of Cárdenas Zepeda and Alonso Petri have fueled the already familiar alarms of families due to the trickle of information coming out of one prison in particular, the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), better known as “El Chipote Nuevo.” There, some of those detained in these recent raids are being “tortured,” according to their families.

“At the moment, it is known that several of them are being forced into extensive, intimidating interrogations, including physical assaults that show signs of torture. Given the two deaths last week, there is immense fear for those who remain in a state of enforced disappearance. In total, there are 33 people of various ages and ideologies; members of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches. Very little is known about them,” family members told EL PAÍS on condition of anonymity.

Days after Alonso Petri’s death, a coalition of non-governmental organizations in exile presented a report denouncing the systematic practice of enforced disappearance and its differentiated impact on victims and their families. Among the cruel treatment methods reported are hanging, simulated drowning, beatings, asphyxiation, forced positions, rape, and penetration with objects. Death threats against family members, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, and severe food and water restrictions have also been reported.

With Cárdenas Zepeda’s death, at least six people have died in the regime’s custody since 2019. Among them are two long-time Sandinistas: Hugo Torres and Humberto Ortega Saavedra, both retired generals. The former saved Daniel Ortega’s life in the 1980s, and the latter was his brother, who had long been at odds with his sister-in-law, co-president Murillo.

“His nails were torn off and his face is unrecognizable”

Perhaps out of anguish and desperation, Rosa Ruíz is one of the few relatives who dared to report the disappearance of her son, Yerri Estrada, a 30-year-old doctor. He was arrested on August 13 at his workplace, the public hospital in Granada. He was summoned to the hospital’s office, where police were waiting for him, only to drag him out with batons.

Rosa believes he was arrested because he was involved in social protests and an organizer in the Political Council of the Blue and White National Unity (UNAB), an opposition coalition. His mother began searching for him in all the prisons and says she obtained information about his whereabouts: he is in El Chipote Nuevo.

“I know my son’s nails were pulled out and his fingers were given electric shocks because they are bandaged. His face is unrecognizable, swollen, and his eyes are practically closed,” the woman told the newspaper La Prensa.

The Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners issued a statement warning about the lethality of enforced disappearances. “These crimes, which clearly show the regime’s brutality, demonstrate that political imprisonment in Nicaragua not only means persecution and torture, but also the death penalty in inhumane conditions. We refuse to normalize this infamous practice and strongly denounce that every death in state custody is a political murder,” states the organization, which, as of the publication of this article, counts 73 political prisoners in Nicaragua, almost half of whom are unaccounted for.

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