Eric Jacobstein, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, speaking with reporters, said that the Nicaraguan government received nothing in exchange for the prisoners’ release and the negotiation signaled no change in US policy toward the government of President Daniel Ortega.
“Though the pressure itself has been consistent, the planning and execution of this release was rapid, and we’ve worked quickly to facilitate the travel of these individuals and really ensure their safety at every step of the journey,” Jacobstein said, adding that Nicaragua continues to “unjustly” detain people.
Asked if there were some prisoners Nicaragua was willing to release, but who refused to leave, he declined to comment.
Jacobstein, who greeted the Nicaraguans in Guatemala, said “these are individuals, some of whom have been victims of torture … who’ve had an extremely difficult time. We did find them generally in very good health and spirits.”
One thing that struck the US diplomat about some of his conversations with the prisoners was the “true pettiness and cruelty” of Ortega’s government for imprisoning people for no justifiable reason.
Among the Nicaraguans released were 13 members of Texas-based religious charity Mountain Gateway, Catholic laypeople, students, and others. “This is the day we have prayed for,” pastor Jon Britton Hancock, Mountain Gateway’s founder, said in a statement.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo agreed to host the Nicaraguans while they apply for entry to the United States.
“It’s a real, tangible example of what democracies can do, working together,” John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told reporters in a phone briefing Thursday.
Asked about the involvement in the prisoner release by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has led a Biden administration effort to deter migration by improving conditions in Central America, Kirby said it “all that stemmed right from the work that the vice president did on root causes.” He declined to give details on Harris’s role and described the effort as an administration-wide initiative. Harris is the Democratic nominee for president.
Nicaragua’s government did not immediately confirm the announcement on the prisoners’ release.
Nicaraguan human rights advocate Haydeé Castillo said the release of the prisoners was a “triumph for the Nicaraguan people’s resistance.” She noted that the prisoners weren’t really freed because their release comes with forced displacement from their country.
“Nobody should be held prisoner for thinking differently,” Castillo said.
She said advocates were reviewing lists to see how many such prisoners remain in custody.
Ivannia Alvarez, an exiled Nicaraguan and member of the Recognition Mechanism for Political Prisoners, said that her most recent count had been 151 people jailed, suggesting that some of them are still detained.
Environmentalist Amaru Ruiz said on social platforms that among those released were eight Indigenous forest rangers.
“The United States again calls on the government of Nicaragua to immediately cease the arbitrary arrest and detention of its citizens for merely exercising their fundamental freedoms,” Sullivan said.
The announcement came just two days after Nicaragua’s National Assembly approved changes to the criminal code allowing the government to try Nicaraguans and foreigners in absentia.
Opponents and organizations that have fled or been forced into exile in Ortega’s yearslong campaign to silence critical voices could be fined, be sentenced to lengthy prison terms, and see their property seized by the government under the approved changes.
Thursday’s operation marked the second time the Biden administration won the release of a large group of Nicaraguan political prisoners and flew them out of the country. Last year, the Nicaraguan government freed 222 inmates, including top opposition politicians and business leaders. They were taken to Washington.
Far more Nicaraguans have fled into exile themselves to escape the repression that followed massive 2018 protests that Ortega dubbed a failed coup with international backing.
Material from The Washington Post was used in this report.
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Publish date : 2024-09-05 08:52:00
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