“Evidence Links 54 Nicaraguan Officials to Crimes Against Humanity”

A new report by the United Nations Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua (GHREN), identifies 54 senior officials of the Nicaraguan State, Army, Police, and also non-state actors linked to the Sandinista Front, as executors of crimes against humanity in Nicaragua, since the April protests broke out in 2018.

The report is based on 1631 interviews with witnesses, victims and perpetrators of the repression, and 8483 documents, including some confidential documents, and after evaluation of the evidence, the UN Group of Experts has “reasonable grounds to believe” that the 54 officials identified have been involved in the execution of crimes of murder, imprisonment, extrajudicial executions, torture, deportation, and persecution.

On the program Esta Semana, which is broadcast on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel due to TV censorship in Nicaragua, we spoke to Reed Brody, an American jurist internationally known as “the dictator hunter,” for his career as a criminal investigator against the dictatorships of Chile, Haiti, Chad, and the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide, who joined GHREN in September 2024.

Reed analyzed the implications of the GHREN report on the 54 repressors within the chain of command of the Ortega Murillo dictatorship: “the fact that the United Nations points you out in a report is already serious”, but “we are not saying that they are responsible and we are not condemning anyone”, they all enjoy the presumption of innocence, “and can only be sentenced in a court that has jurisdiction”.

On the possible avenues to exercise justice, Brody mentioned “international criminal justice, where an Argentine judge issued an injunction against Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, and 30 other state officials. The idea is that at some point there will be a judge, perhaps a Nicaraguan judge, who will take up those accusations and offer the accused the opportunity to defend themselves”.

With a favorable vote of 29 countries, 14 abstentions and four against (China, Cuba, Bolivia and Vietnam), the United Nations Human Rights Council extended for two more years the mandate of the GHREN to continue monitoring human rights violations in Nicaragua, and to present a report to the UN General Assembly in September 2025.

“There is a growing isolation of the Government of Nicaragua, the Government is self-isolating, withdrawing from the Human Rights Council, but it is not going to withdraw from the UN General Assembly, that marks a growing condemnation of the repression in Nicaragua,” said Brody.

The evidence on the 54 repressors

The report of the United Nations Group of Experts on Human Rights in Nicaragua (GHREN) identifies 54 high-ranking officials of the Nicaraguan State, the Army, the Police, the Sandinista Front, as well as non-state actors, who are accused of committing serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity. Can we identify who is at the top of the chain of command?

At the top we have President Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. In the report we go by crime, we examine the extrajudicial executions that took place in 2018, then the crime of torture, confiscations, denationalizations, how in the facts those abuses, violations or crimes took place.

For example, the repression of 2018 was a joint operation with the Police, the Army, the paramilitary groups, with commanders of the Sandinista Front. We pointed out the most key people: the 54. We have many more names, but we have a threshold of proof and we cannot put all the names that are denounced by the sources. We focus on the key figures, in the Army, for example, General Julio César Avilés, who is responsible for the systematic repression by the Army in April 2018; in the Police, (the first commissioner) Francisco Díaz, but also the deputy director Ramón Avellán. Néstor Mónca Lau, the presidential security advisor, who is a key player in the parallel structures; Fidel Moreno, the secretary general of the Managua mayor’s office, another key figure who makes the link between many chains of command and acting as a political operator at multiple levels.

The report repeatedly states that GHREN has “reasonable grounds to believe” that an official has responsibility for the execution of crimes of murder, imprisonment, extrajudicial killings, torture, deportation, persecution. What does “reasonable grounds to believe” mean? Is it an evidentiary term?

Of course, we are pointing out people, we are not saying they are responsible and we are not condemning anyone. The evidentiary threshold of “reasonable grounds to believe” is more or less the same as what a prosecutor does to file charges. I am a prosecutor, but we are not prosecutors here, we are UN experts and we are pointing out, as part of our mandate, the alleged perpetrators of human rights violations. They all enjoy the presumption of innocence. And they can only be convicted in a court that has jurisdiction and offers them all the rights of defense and due process. These are reasonable accusations if an observer has reason to believe that these persons participated in the crime.

Is that “reason to believe” based on evidence?

Yes, but there is no magic formula. There are people (about whom) we have many sources, there are others that we have a document signed by them.

It is not very common in UN groups to point out responsibilities. We thought that, at this stage, it was very important for accountability that we put names and surnames. But we are very cautious, we have many more people. In addition, in the graphs attached to the report, we have silhouettes of people we have identified, but we are not going to name them, because we think that the fact that the United Nations points you out in a report is already serious.

There are officials who were singled out in previous reports and do not appear now in this list of these 54. Does this mean that they have been excluded, released from their responsibility?

No, we are not excluding anyone, we are saying that the 54 people went through filters, we have a staff of seven people who presented the findings and we, the experts, decided if as reasonable people, we are going to take the responsibility of naming those people and put them in a UN report. The bar (of evidence) was quite high, and every time there was doubt, we excluded the person.

The last time we spoke on this program, a month ago, GHREN did not present names because it said it was sending the report to the Nicaraguan Government beforehand, so that those mentioned could present their version. Was there any reaction on the part of the Government authorities or the Army or other institutions?

No, unfortunately, we have never had any reply, any dialogue, any exchange on the part of the Government. We would have liked to talk to the people who have been singled out, we do not know if our letters have reached their hands. At some point, if there were charges against these people or other sanctions, it would be important that their versions be heard.

In the presentation of this report, you said that the identification of this list, of this chain of command, is a guide or a route to justice. How can these cases be brought to international justice?

There are many international justice systems, such as international criminal justice, where an Argentine judge issued an injunction against Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, and 30 other state officials, it is criminal. Many countries have also applied individual sanctions, which is not international justice, but economic or administrative sanctions. Evidently, the idea is that, at some point, there will be a judge, perhaps a Nicaraguan judge, who will take up these accusations and offer the people accused the opportunity to defend themselves.

Six Army generals and five colonels

The new revelations of the report point to high-ranking military officers of the Nicaraguan Army presided over by General Julio César Avilés in the repression. For example, Major General, Bayardo Rodríguez, chief of the General Staff, is singled out for having lowered the presidential order to the military commanders in a meeting on April 20, 2018 to “neutralize” the protesters. What is the responsibility of the chief of the General Staff?

The GHREN, since its first report three years ago, found that as of 2018 there were crimes against humanity. In other words, the Government, Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo and the other people involved, have waged an attack against a sector of the Nicaraguan population and we qualify it as a crime against humanity.

All the people who have consciously participated in this attack against the Nicaraguan people, their participation can be qualified as a crime against humanity. The private who participated and killed a person, both he and the person who gave the order, would have participated in the same crime against humanity. Then, the chief of the General Staff, who read the order, the people who executed the order, the regional commands that we pointed out in the report, those people, if the facts proposed in the report are proved to be plausible, could have responsibility in the crime against humanity.

General Rigoberto Balladares, former head of the Army’s political intelligence, the Directorate of Defense Information, and General Leonel Gutiérrez, head of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence, are accused of having participated with the former director of police intelligence, Adolfo Marenco, in the repression. What kind of activities did the heads of army intelligence develop?

General Balladares was singled out for assuming operational control of the repression in coordination with the other groups. His role included intelligence tasks, tactical surveillance, the use of drones, thermal cameras. He jointly directed with Brigadier General Leonel Gutiérrez, who headed the Directorate of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and collaborated with the Police, with other Army divisions, in operations in which they promoted the use of snipers and the use of weapons reserved for military use.

The Army continues to totally deny its participation in any of these acts, but in addition to the “inside” sources that have spoken to us, we have evidence of the use of snipers, of weapons for the exclusive use of the Army. Also the instructions, the training of police and armed groups in military tactics, all of this points to the responsibility of the Army and of these people.

The head of the Army’s Special Operations Command, Colonel Manuel Salvador Gaitán, who participated in the repression together with the Police Special Operations Directorate, the DOE, and five other Army colonels, heads of the four commands of the military regions and the southern detachment that participated in the repression, are also mentioned. Were there also military personnel involved in repressive actions?

That is the sense of our finding. General Salvador Gaitan was one of the main responsible for the deployment of the snipers and under his command operations were carried out with high precision weapons. And then, we point out, the regional commands and we show in the report, how many dead, how many extrajudicial executions there were under each command in the confrontations and in the assassinations by region, by command.

The report states that some documents prove the functioning of this chain of command and how orders are issued, but that after the crackdown intensified, most orders were no longer put in writing and were only transmitted verbally. How can these responsibilities be proven?

From a certain point on, there were no written orders, and we do not have access to many of the written orders. They are sources we have, people who participated, people within the system. Obviously, we cannot reveal the sources and of course, at some point, if there was a contradictory process, it would be complicated, because those people do not want or cannot speak publicly.

State and pro-government agents

In addition to the Army, the Police and some other state agencies, the report also describes the operation carried out by the pro-government forces, the shock forces, the paramilitaries that have now been institutionalized as volunteer police in the Police.

We have the shock groups, the Sandinista Youth. We pointed out people like Pedro Orozco, Milton Ruiz García, of the Sandinista Youth, who were under a joint operation with the National Police, with the Army, and were under the joint command of those operations.

Another thing that stands out is how the party and the commanders of the repressive bodies have worked together, and a key person in this is Fidel Moreno, who plays a central and transversal role in the repressive apparatus of the State.

In 2018, he was the one who transmitted the order of the vice president, known as “let’s go all out”, but he also plays a role in the fabrication of cases or in the purges the people dismissed from the Judiciary, he is a person who has a transversal role in repression. He has been in charge of the mapping of non-profit organizations, identifying them for their cancellation and he has cancelled, as it is known, more than 5000 NGOs. Also, he is the person who draws up the lists of people considered threats. And he is one of those people who, although he is not in charge of a repressive body, is present in many moments and in many of the different violations.

The report describes the most recent phase of repression, which is focused on political persecution, denationalizations, confiscations, deportations and denial of entry into the country to Nicaraguans.

All institutions have their role to play. In the Judiciary we pointed out Alba Luz Ramos, Marvin Aguilar, Judge Rothschuh, who read the sentences. It is like a factory where people have to be singled out, condemned, stripped of their nationality, their assets confiscated.

There are different people at different times. The National Assembly, we name Gustavo Porras, for example, who legalized the confiscations. Then, the people who fabricated the cases, (the magistrates) who endorsed the confiscations, such as Juana Méndez, the judges who executed the sentences and the confiscations. It is a confluence of people, and here we name several people, Karen Chavarría, and others who are in the report.

The report points to the Vice Minister of the Interior, Luis Cañas, as one of the key persons in the whole process of denying people entry into the country and deportations.

He works in the Ministry of Interior and we also pointed him out for obstructing judicial processes and discriminatory treatment against political prisoners. Also in the Ministry of Interior is Franya Urey Blandón, who is one of those responsible for the massive cancellation of NGOs. There are many institutions involved.

Could these civilian officials claim that it was up to them to apply the law, or could they say that they simply had to follow orders and appeal to the principle of due obedience to evade their responsibility?

We have (the names of) all the people, from those who manufactured the passports of the expellees, to the people who signed decrees. We tried to put people with some active role. We separate what are crimes by their nature, such as assassinations, such as extrajudicial executions, where a manifestly illegal order cannot be obeyed. And then, things that are more administrative, that is, a confiscation, or issuing a passport. Here we only put people who had their own will to participate and where they had the possibility of not participating. The people who fabricated cases, the judges who repeatedly issued orders against the rights of the people, those people did participate, at their level, in this great crime against humanity, which is the attack against the people of Nicaragua.

Condemnation of Nicaragua at the UN

This week at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, a resolution condemning these violations by the Nicaraguan State was approved with 29 countries voting in favor, 14 countries abstaining and four voting against: China, Cuba, Bolivia and Vietnam. What does this majority participation mean and what do you expect from the recommendations that this report is making to the international community?

The vote was very significant, two years ago, when the group’s mandate was renewed, there were 21 votes in favor and this year 29 out of 57, four negative and the rest abstentions.

There is a growing isolation of the Government of Nicaragua, the Government is self-isolating, withdrawing from the Human Rights Council, and not participating in the UN Universal Periodic Review.

This resolution elevates the group’s report to an item on the agenda where problematic countries are discussed and, in addition, asks us to report to the United Nations General Assembly. Nicaragua can withdraw from the Human Rights Council, but it will not withdraw from the General Assembly. This marks a growing condemnation, it must be said that the situation and repression in Nicaragua has also increased in the last year.

Does this mean that at the UN General Assembly in September this year, the GHREN will appear before the UN, will they present a new report?

We are going to present the same report, but with an oral presentation, an oral update, which will give an account of the events of the last few months.

The board extended GHREN’s mandate for another two years, what is its main objective after having already submitted this list of 54 officers and the other reports?

To date, we have been approached by more sources with more information. In addition, as a result of the constitutional reform, countless laws are now being changed and we have to evaluate the adherence of those laws to human rights. We are also going to monitor, which is the first mandate of the group, to observe and point out the violations that occur. We want to deepen in our study how the government institutions work, maybe we are going to see things of economic corruption, what is the business plan of the rulers. Unfortunately, there is still a lot to do.