(LifeSiteNews) — Nicaragua’s communist dictatorship released dozens of political prisoners at the demand of the U.S. shortly after the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
On January 10, the government of President Daniel Ortega announced the release of “dozens of people” imprisoned for political reasons. The U.S. had put pressure on the regime to release the prisoners, coinciding with the 19th anniversary of Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, becoming co-presidents of the country.
“Today, the brutal Murillo-Ortega dictatorship ‘celebrates’ 19 years of what should have been a five-year democratic term. Nicaraguans voted for a president in 2006, not for an illegitimate, lifelong dynasty. Rewriting the constitution and crushing dissent will not erase the aspirations of Nicaraguans to live free from tyranny,” the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs stated on X.
According to ACI Prensa, the government of Nicaragua did not provide any details about the released prisoners. However, the Spanish EFE news agency confirmed the release of seven opposition figures and their families, while the newspaper Le Prensa reported, citing a local media outlet, that at least 30 political prisoners were released.
“What happened in Venezuela has unleashed fear in the tyrannical government and hope in the people,” the former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields Yescas, told ACI Prensa.
“It is interesting that a simple statement from the American embassy led to the release of … the prisoners in Nicaragua. This means that a little pressure from the United States can produce a lot of change,” the former diplomat noted.
The U.S. embassy in Nicaragua wrote the following on X on January 9: “Venezuela took an important step toward peace by releasing a large number of political prisoners. In Nicaragua, more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or missing, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly. Peace is only possible with freedom!”
The embassy added a Spanish translation of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post in which he spoke of the release of “a large number of political prisoners as a sign of ‘seeking peace’” in Venezuela.
McFields said that among the citizens of Nicaragua, “there is a quiet hope that the dictators can fall at any moment. The timing is uncertain, but there is a certainty that they can fall. Before this, talking about the fall of a dictator was utopia, it was madness. But not anymore, now it’s a reality.”
“The dictatorship,” McFields continued, is reeling from the images “of Maduro, the all-powerful leader, arrested and humiliated. And those images have deeply affected the regime. The fear is so great that, although they have expressed solidarity with Maduro, they haven’t mentioned President Trump at any point.”
The former diplomat stated that “Ortega has been in power illegally for 19 years, [a period of] illegality and brutality, religious persecution, confiscation of churches, harassment of the church, destruction and desecration of churches – a horrendous situation that has been experienced in Nicaragua, but what happened today fills us with immense, immeasurable joy.”
The Oretga regime has been persecuting the Catholic Church relentlessly over the past decades. The government has unjustly arrested priests, expelled religious congregations, and shut down Catholic radio stations, among other criminal acts against Catholics.