Nicaraguan government responsible for at least 8 deaths in custody since 2018, UN report finds

The Nicaraguan government is to blame for at least eight deaths in custody since 2018, according to a recent UN report. This comes after the government launched a crackdown on dissent and attacked democratic institutions. U.N. experts made this finding on Tuesday. The report, by the U.N. Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, is the latest criticism of the current government, which includes co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

They have been suppressing dissent since a series of mass protests in 2018 and have recently canceled elections. The report highlights inconsistencies in the government's account of the death of Indigenous Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera. Rivera was imprisoned for 32 months without contact from his family and died in May. The official cause of death was linked to complications from a previous COVID-19 infection, but an independent assessment found this explanation "not medically coherent."

The report also details failures in care that led to the deaths of Ortega's estranged brother Humberto Ortega, former Sandinista guerrilla fighter Hugo Torres, and lawyer Carlos Cárdenas Zepeda. The experts called for the government to release information on 29 people whose whereabouts are still unknown and to release anyone detained on political grounds.