Nicaraguan indigenous leader died in custody; daughter denounces government

Tininiska Rivera Castellón described the agonizing experience of seeing her father, indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera Bryan, hospitalized and dying after nearly three years of forced disappearance. "I had the hope that he could have his freedom and see him in person, not in those photos," she said. "Seeing them made me uncomfortable, it made me sad, it gave me a lot of anxiety."

Rivera stated that her father was arbitrarily imprisoned by the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime and disappeared for almost three years, completely isolated from his family. He was only presented when he was close to death. "He was murdered for three years," she emphasized, adding that even after his death, "my father remains kidnapped."

The regime refused to hand over the body, and no family members could participate in the hasty funeral they organized. "They didn't even give us that right, the right to say goodbye to him," Rivera said in an interview with CONFIDENCIAL and Esta Semana. She highlighted that the wound of her father's death in regime custody on May 30, 2026, deepened the next day with the arrest of six relatives who demanded his body.

"We don't know where they are, we don't know what has happened to them in these last hours since their detention on May 31. I simply know that the Police took them," she said. Rivera asserted her family's right to be at the burial and accompany her father in his final farewell, not government officials under whose watch he died. She vowed to continue "demanding their release" so his remains can rest in Sandy Bay, as the indigenous leader wished.

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tenía derecho a estar en el entierro y acompañar a mi padre en su último adiós.