Nicaragua frees 135 political prisoners after secret U.S. negotiations

Nicaragua’s dictatorial government on Thursday freed 135 political prisoners, including 13 members of a Texas-based evangelical Christian organization, in a secret operation negotiated by the Biden administration, officials announced.

The prisoners, all Nicaraguan citizens, were flown to Guatemala and will be able to apply for U.S. legal status. Descending from the plane, they cried, “God Bless America” and “God Bless Guatemala,” said Eric Jacobstein, a State Department official who greeted them.

Nicaragua’s government has launched a fierce crackdown on the Catholic church and other religious organizations, jailing priests and bishops, closing religious schools and stripping charities and ministries of their legal standing.

President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have accused Catholic clergy of supporting anti-government protests that swept the country in 2018. The authorities led a brutal crackdown on the demonstrators and have since closed more than 5,000 civic organizations, many of them religious. In recent months, they have intensified their repression of evangelical Christian groups, which had largely steered clear of the political realm.

Among those freed Thursday are 13 members of the Texas-based Mountain Gateway missionary organization, as well as Catholic laypeople, students, journalists and human rights defenders, U.S. officials said.

“It’s a real, tangible example of what democracies can do, working together,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, told reporters in a phone briefing Thursday.

He said the operation was an administration-wide effort that involved President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. It was “very much in keeping with” Harris’ work in Central America, he said, which has largely been aimed at deterring migration. Harris is the Democratic nominee for president.

The Biden administration and U.S. congressional representatives have pressed Nicaragua for months to free the prisoners. But “the planning and execution of this release was rapid,” Jacobstein said. He said there was no quid pro quo involved, but he declined to provide further details, saying the diplomatic conversations were private.

Félix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan political prisoner now living in the United States, said he was contacted by a U.S. government source last week and asked to prepare a “lessons learned” document for the possible release of the Nicaraguans. They were sent to Guatemala – rather than the United States – because of political sensitivities during the American presidential campaign, he said.

While there was bipartisan support for seeking the prisoners’ freedom, “there was not necessarily bipartisan support to fast-track” their refugee process, he said. The Biden administration asked allies to receive the Nicaraguans, and Guatemala quickly stepped up, he said.

Maradiaga, a former opposition political leader, said the release showed the value of international pressure on Nicaragua, including U.S. sanctions.

“Ortega pretends he doesn’t care about international pressure,” he said. “But he’s concerned.”

The highest-profile prisoners released Thursday were a group working for Mountain Gateway, an evangelical Christian organization based in Dripping Springs, Texas. They included 11 pastors who were arrested in December and later found guilty of money laundering, plus two of their lawyers. The pastors had received sentences of 12 to 15 years, and were collectively fined almost $1 billion, the organization said in a statement. It said the charges were baseless.

“These pastors and attorneys have suffered greatly for the sake of the Gospel, but it has not been in vain,” Jon Britton Hancock, the founder of Mountain Gateway, said in a statement. “The Kingdom of God is advancing because of their persecution. Today, we cry tears of joy because our brothers and sisters are free!”

He explained in a telephone interview that the ministers were arrested after a two-week series of open-air meetings last year organized by numerous evangelical churches that drew more than 1 million people. The events were religious in nature, he said, not political.

“Our movement was so big, they were afraid someone would take that and turn it into a political movement to depose him,” he said, referring to Ortega.

Thursday’s operation marked the second time the Biden administration won the release of a large group of Nicaraguan political prisoners and flew them out of the country. Last year, Nicaragua freed 222 inmates, including Maradiaga and other top opposition politicians. They were taken to Washington, and the Ortega government later stripped their Nicaraguan citizenship.

The U.S. government will assist the released prisoners with food, housing and psychological care as they build new lives, authorities said.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said in a tweet that his country “firmly rejects the threat of a return to the authoritarian era. Today we reaffirm this commitment and return the international solidarity that we have received so often, by taking in 135 Nicaraguan brothers, freed political prisoners.”