Jailed guerrilla leader who fought alongside Ortega dies

Former guerrilla Hugo Torres Jiménez, one of the 46 opponents of Daniel Ortega’s government imprisoned since last year in Nicaragua, died on Saturday, his relatives reported in a statement without giving further details.

“We communicate with deep pain the death of our beloved father,” said his children, in a note released by the opposition bloc National Blue and White Unit (UNAB), which Torres was a member of.

Detained since June 2021 in the El Chipote prison, in December he was taken to a hospital for health complications, according to people close to the family.

“By the express will of our father, no funeral honors or public ceremonies will be held,” added the family.

Torres, 73, was vice president of the opposition Democratic Renovating Union (Unamos), formerly known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS, center-left), which emerged in 1995 with militants who disagreed with Ortega’s political leadership.

His organization, like many other opponents, was grouped in the UNAB.

He was also a prominent Sandinista guerrilla fighter and retired army general. In 1974, he risked his life in an operation to free a group of political prisoners from the Somoza dictatorship, including Ortega.

In power since 2007 and leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Ortega accuses them of conspiring against his government, with the support of the United States.

According to former guerrilla and exiled Sandinista dissident Mónica Baltodano, Torres died in the hospital, where he was taken as a prisoner.

“We are very sorry for this death of a hero, of a true hero of the struggles against the dictatorships that have dominated Nicaragua, the Somoza dictatorship and now the Ortega dictatorship, what is a dictatorship, it is brutal and criminal,” Baltodano told channel 100. News, which is broadcast over the internet.

The Unamos group had denounced last January that Torres’s health had deteriorated in prison and demanded that the government report on his situation. The authorities have not commented so far.

Torres was one of 46 opponents detained last year, most of them before the November elections, where Ortega won his fourth consecutive re-election. Among those detained there are 7 people who aspired to compete with Ortega in the elections.

All of them were accused by the Prosecutor’s Office of undermining national integrity and promoting foreign interference. Of them, 18 have already been found guilty by the courts in the last two weeks, and seven were sentenced to terms ranging from eight to 13 years in prison.