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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Elections & Politics

Groups seek IACHR protection measures for detained Nicaraguan opposition lawyer

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Named sources In the courts
  • Cejil and Nicaragua Nunca Más asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for protection measures for Nicaraguan lawyer and government critic Thelma Montenegro.
  • The organizations said Montenegro was detained after visiting a police station to renew her driver’s license, briefly released, and detained again when she returned to recover confiscated belongings.
  • They described her detention and disappearance as part of sustained persecution against her family and warned that she requires daily medication and ongoing medical monitoring.

Two human rights organizations have asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to issue protection measures for Nicaraguan opposition lawyer Thelma Montenegro, whom they describe as arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared and at serious risk of irreparable harm.

The Center for Justice and International Law and the Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective said Montenegro, 54, is a human rights defender and mother of three adult children. They called her detention an act of retaliation for her search for justice and said it forms part of a wider campaign of persecution and violence against members of her family during Nicaragua’s repression of people who oppose the government or are perceived as opponents.

She is in a situation of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance and is exposed to a serious risk of irreparable harm to her life, integrity, and personal liberty.

· Cejil and Nicaragua Nunca MásThe organizations used this description in their request for protection measures from the IACHR.

The organizations said Montenegro went to the police station in Santa María de Pantasma, in northern Jinotega province, on August 19 to renew her driver’s license. They said authorities detained her there and confiscated her mobile phone and personal documents. She remained in custody for three days before her release on August 22.

The following day, police again summoned her, allegedly so she could recover the belongings taken during the first detention. When she appeared, the organizations said, authorities deprived her of her liberty again.

Her arbitrary detention and subsequent disappearance are an act of retaliation for her relentless search for justice, and form part of the persecution and violence directed against different members of her family.

· Cejil and Nicaragua Nunca MásThe organizations linked Montenegro’s detention to alleged family-wide persecution in Nicaragua.

Montenegro has criticized the government led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo and belongs to the Association of Mothers of April. Her brother Oliver Montenegro was killed in January 2019 at his farm in El Cuá. In June of that year, her brother Edgar Montenegro and her foster son Yalmar Zeledón were killed in Honduras, where they had sought refuge. Her husband, Francisco Blandón Herrera, was killed in August 2019 in Wiwilí, near the Honduran border.

The organizations said the family’s suffering had not been an isolated episode but a series of systematic and continuing acts. They also said Montenegro has health conditions and a medical history requiring daily medication and constant medical follow-up.

The harm suffered by the family has not been limited to an isolated episode, but has involved a series of systematic and continuing acts over time.

· Cejil and Nicaragua Nunca MásThe groups described the broader pattern they said should be considered in Montenegro’s case.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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