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The “forced silence” of families, a consequence of the “fear” imposed by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, is one of the factors explaining the drop in Nicaragua’s list of political prisoners to 46 cases as of February 2026. That is 16 fewer cases than the December 2025 report, which included 62 people. However, the list does not reflect the true number of political prisoners, as many cases go unreported due to fear.
According to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, the decrease is also due to the release of 19 detainees between January and February 2026, as well as a “significant undercount” of cases caused by “fear of reprisals.”
The list of 46 cases includes 43 men and 3 women. Only three new cases were added during the period under review, again due to families’ “forced silence,” which results in a “hidden figure” of additional cases.
“This undercount does not stem from a lack of cases, but from the widespread fear imposed,” the report adds, stressing that political persecution in the country has not ceased.
Released prisoners forced to report to the police
To date, the legal basis and conditions of the releases remain unknown. The Mechanism welcomes the fact that those imprisoned for political reasons have returned to their homes. However, it denounces that most “do not enjoy full freedom, as they face permanent control and surveillance measures.”
The 19 released political prisoners are subject to “constant monitoring and surveillance,” and are also required to:
- Sign in regularly at police stations
- Comply with “movement restrictions under forms of house arrest or municipality-level confinement”
- Make “frequent phone check-ins with police agents”
- Submit to “monitoring of their daily activities”
Bayardo Arce on list of political prisoners
The Mechanism included Bayardo Arce Castaño as a political prisoner after determining that his detention and conviction constitute a case of “political persecution and selective application of the law.”
However, it clarifies that the inclusion of the former presidential adviser on economic affairs — or of any other public official on Nicaragua’s list of political prisoners — does not represent an “endorsement of impunity, but exclusively a demand that the State end arbitrary detentions and restore the fundamental guarantees that must apply to all persons,” the organization stated in its February 27, 2026 report.
The recognition comes seven months after his detention on the night of Wednesday, July 30, 2025. On January 27, 2026, the Ortega regime’s courts sentenced him for the alleged crime of “money laundering, in the form of defrauding the Nicaraguan State,” thereby tacitly confirming his detention and enforced disappearance.
The organization explained that in Arce Castaño’s case it verified elements such as the “lack of due process, absence of official information, incommunicado detention, and harm to his family environment.”
The former official’s wife, Amelia Ybarra-Rojas, and his brother-in-law Amílcar Manuel Ybarra-Rojas, president of the board of Agricorp, were accused as “co-perpetrators” of the same crimes. This, the Mechanism said, demonstrates the “extension of persecution to his close circle as a form of pressure and indirect punishment,” as documented in other cases.
Threats and surveillance against families of political prisoners
Of the 46 political prisoners remaining on the Mechanism’s list, 15 are senior citizens:
- Henry Ruiz Hernández, 82
- José Ricardo Córtez Dávila (72)
- Brooklyn Rivera Bryan (73)
- Steadman Fagot Müller (71)
- Álvaro Baltodano Cantarero (73)
- Bayardo Arce Castaño (76)
- Carlos Brenes Sánchez (70)
- Salvadora Martínez Aburto (68)
- José Manuel Urbina Lara (63)
- Wilfredo Balmaceda (65)
- Victor Boitano Coleman (64)
- Zacarias Isabel Cano (62)
- Eddie González Valdivia (67)
- Nancy Elizabeth Henríquez James (63)
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Ten of the political prisoners remain forcibly disappeared: since the moment of their detention, their families have received no official information about their whereabouts and have been unable to see them or learn about their health.
“This situation constitutes enforced disappearance, considered one of the most serious human rights violations,” the Mechanism warned.
The organization — which has documented arbitrary detentions in Nicaragua since April 2018 — denounced that the families of detainees continue to be “threatened, surveilled, and harassed by the authorities in a deliberate attempt to prevent them from exercising their right to report abuses, document violations, or seek legal assistance.”
