The police arrived at the house of José Alejandro Hurtado in the capital of Nicaragua one evening in January, telling him that he had to come to their station because someone had rented a car using his identity card and that the vehicle had been stolen.
This is the last one that someone saw him.
Mr. Hurtado, 57, engineer of longtime IT and political activist, is one of the three dozen people who, according to human rights groups, were disappeared by the Nicaraguan authorities – removed by officials refusing to recognize their detention or to disclose their entry.
Such disappearances constitute a violation of international law and are particularly resonant in Latin America, where practice was a characteristic of brutal dictatorships. In Nicaragua, they have occurred over the past two years, the majority of them more recently.
Almost half of the 73 political prisoners that human rights groups have officially documented in Nicaragua are not in any database of public courts. They had no contact with their families and the crimes they were charged with are unknown. Families went from prison to prison, from police station to the police station, looking for their relatives, without success, say human rights groups.
The wave of arbitrary detentions without transparent legal processes represents a new tactic, according to the rights groups, in a wave of political oppression in Nicaragua. There, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who are co-presidents, have since eliminated almost all the vestiges of the opposition which could threaten their grip on power.
This shows how even after having stopped and killed hundreds of demonstrators and sent hundreds of others to exile, the authoritarian government of Nicaragua finds new ways of stifling dissent and sowing frightening among the population.
Relatives of the missing prisoners now fear the worst, after two of the missing were recently returned to their dead family.
On August 25, the body of Mauricio A. Petri, who had been arrested 38 days earlier with his wife and son as part of a scan of members of a church targeted by the government, was given to his family.
The authorities summoned parents to the office of a coroner and escorted them in a cemetery to bury Mr. Petri without the possibility of an autopsy, said human rights groups.
Four days later, the body of Carlos Cárdenas Cepeda, lawyer for the Catholic Church, which was also targeted by the government, was returned to his family. He had been detained for 15 days. No cause of death was given in both cases, and the government made no public declaration about them.
These deaths alarmed the families of other prisoners about whom the authorities have not revealed anything. Of these 33 missing prisoners, at least a dozen are over 60 years old, and several, like Mr. Hurtado, have a high diabetes and blood pressure. One of the missing detainees is 81.
The police who presented themselves without a mandate to arrest Mr. Hurtado and search his home in Managua suggested five police stations where the family could find him later, said Mr. Hurtado, Adolfo.
Mr. Hurtado’s wife and his two brothers spent weeks visiting police stations and prisons, where they said they were facing bureaucratic colors and expectations of time.
“At the beginning, two brothers and she went once a week, so three times a week, for more or less a month and a half,” said Adolfo Hurtado, referring to José Alejandro Hurtado’s wife. “This rhythm was not durable for the family.”
Adolfo Hurtado said he thought that his brother had been targeted because he had publicly published a proposal for national dialogue and elections to combat the country’s political crisis.
The co -presidents of Nicaragua, but in particular Ms. Murillo, seem determined to clean the political landscape of any independent voice which could threaten its capacity to govern if Mr. Ortega, who will be 80 years old, dies.
Ms. Murillo, 74, who also acts as government spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comments.
Forced disappearances have a long and painful story in Latin America. The term “Desaparecido” became synonymous with political repression between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina, when a military dictatorship removed up to 30,000 accused dissidents, tortured them and, in hundreds of cases, threw them in the sea.
And throughout Latin America Hundreds of thousands of people who have disappeared since the 1970s were taken to secret, tortured and executed detention centers. Many of their bodies have never been found.
While hundreds of people were finally tried in Argentina, many missing cases have been unpunished, said María Adela Antokoletz, who heads the Latin Federation of Associations for the relatives of the owned detention.
“We realize that the odious practice of forced disappearance continues as a way to silence complaints,” she said.
Mexico, Salvador and Colombia are three countries in the region where practice is still occurring, although more often perpetrated by gangs or cartels with the acquiescence of the local police or mayors, said Ms. Antokoletz.
The authorities are forced to inform family members if they hold someone, said Barbara Frey, a retired professor at the University of Minnesota who co -published a book on disappearances in contemporary Latin America.
“If the state has taken them and will not say to the families where they are, it is a disappearance,” said Ms. Frey. “This is exactly what the definition says.”
The term Historically, applied to disappeared people for prolonged periods of time, said Reed Brody, a member of the United Nations Human Rights Experts in Nicaragua. But international authorities have increasingly recognized that it also applies to short-term secret detentions, such as those in Nicaragua, he said.
Brody said that 33 cases documented in Nicaragua would have underestimated because many families are too afraid to file a complaint with human rights organizations. Families have said they had been harassed and threatened with arrest or confiscate their property if they persist in trying to find their loved ones, said human rights experts.
The missing include community leaders, teachers, indigenous leaders, journalists and pastors. In at least five cases, several people from the same family have been arrested. Many were detained during the summer, when more than 50 people were arrested in simultaneous roundups.
“It is difficult to know why some people are arrested and some people have disappeared,” said Brody.
Angelica Chavarría was seen for the last time in May 2024, the same day as her partner, Daniel Ortega’s brother Humberto was placed under house arrest, according to human rights organizations.
He died last year.
Thelma Brenes says she has a theory behind the disappearances. His father, Carlos Brenes Sánchez, 70, and his partner, Salvadora Martínez, 67, said Ms. Brenes, was taken on August 14 from their home to Jinotpe, about 90 miles north of Managua, said Brenes.
“If they disappear from people they do not record in prison, how can you prove that there are political prisoners in Nicaragua?” She said. “There are no photos. It is not in the system. Can we prove it? “
Mr. Brenes is a retired military colonel and a long -standing opponent of Mr. Ortega. He was arrested in 2018 when he spoke out against government abuse after Mass Street demonstrations, but was released a year later under an amnesty law.
He had respected the terms of his release, regularly checking with the police and not leaving the country, when he was arrested without explanation, said his daughter.
“We want proof of life,” said Brenes.
Claudia Pineda, spokesperson for the blue and white surveillance group, an organization of human rights following the arrests motivated by a political motivation, said that the Sandinian-controlled legislature changed the penal code in 2021 to allow a person to be detected for 90 days.
A potential avenue of relief for missing prisoners and their families would be to file a movement of Habeas Corpus requiring their release. But the government has struck down any lawyer who could be willing to face such risky cases, said Salvador Marenco, a human rights lawyer who fled to Costa Rica two years ago.
All human rights organizations in Nicaragua, including his, were closed by the government, and some have moved to Costa Rica.
“Was there the opportunity to appeal? Was there the possibility of presenting evidence? Opportunity for someone to say:” This person is innocent? “” Said Marenco. “The answer is no.”
It is difficult, he said, to defend someone against a “ghost affair” which, officially, does not exist.
