QCOSTARICA – The Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) and Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), which once made up Costa Rica’s two-party system, celebrated the release of 222 political prisoners in Nicaragua by the Daniel Ortega regime.
The people who were imprisoned were exiled on a plane that landed in Washington D.C.
According to a law passed Thursday morning by the Nicaraguan legislature, hours before the release and departure of the political prisoners, they will not be able to return to Nicaragua, declared “traitors of the Homeland” and left without nationality.
Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez did not accept being exiled. Confidencial.digital reports that Álvarez, the Bishop of Matagalpa and administrator of the diocese of Estelí has been arrested and imprisoned at La Modelo de Tipitapa.
Read more: Ortega banishes 222 political prisoners from Nicaragua
Another priest also did not accept exile and his future is currently not known. Four others, that made up the original list of 228, were not accepted by the United States, one for having been deported from the U.S. a few years back, and the other three, the White House did not spell out the reason for the rejection, according to the Ortega government.
The United States ensured that all individuals voluntarily consent to travel and enter the United States through the humanitarian parole process so they can receive legal services and legalize their immigration status.
The general secretary of the PLN, Miguel Guillén, said that the release of these prisoners does not diminish the call for an end to the dictatorship.
For his part, the president of the PUSC, Juan Carlos Hidalgo, repudiates the fact that practices such as the exile of those who fight for freedom and democracy still persist.
After the release of political prisoners, international media reported that the National Assembly of Nicaragua met to reform the Political Constitution and declare them “stateless.”
