The arrests of opponents in Nicaragua have been characterized by the use of violence, by the Police and members of pro-government armed groups, says the Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua (GHREN, for its acronym in English) in its report final on human rights violations in Nicaragua.
These apprehensions were carried out under “the deployment of large operatives” and in most of the cases investigated by the experts it was learned that “they used violence excessively and unnecessarily, including through firearms, blows with firearms and other blunt objects, blows with fists, kicks, insults and threats, both during the apprehension and during the transfer of detainees”.
“I was taken out by the dark blue patrol cars, famous for using extreme violence in the city, they put me on the patrol car, and they began to hit me with the butts of their weapons, about four or five police officers,” a citizen told the experts. arrested on April 19, 2018 during a march in Estelí.
He narrated that they detained him “with kicks and blows with their fists, with sticks and gun butts, pulling hair, insults and shoving.”
The report indicates that these reported facts “are consistent” with what was previously stated by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and national and international human rights organizations.
“They started shooting at our truck”
A young man detained in July 2018 explained to the Group of Experts that he was traveling in a van with five other people when “two patrol cars appeared in front” and they managed to see another 15 police vans that were parked on the slope of the street. “A lot of officers came down from the patrols and started shooting at our truck,” he said.
“They were scrambled police, officers, riot police and paramilitaries. They gave me a blow from the butt that left my nose broken, my eyebrow cut off, and my eye permanently damaged. They grabbed me and threw me in the tub. A commissioner slapped me, an officer put his boot over my face and started rubbing it on the floor of the tub,” he said.
The young man recalled that later some buses from the Directorate of Judicial Assistance arrived and they put him on one of them. “They had me stretched out with my hands behind me and my face on my knees, when an officer came and hit me in the face with her fist, hit me on the lip and knocked out a tooth,” he recounted.
Another young man detained, on the same date in Masaya, recounted that he was going to Monimbó when a gray van intercepted them and seven paramilitaries got out with black ski masks, dressed in civilian clothes with sports shoes. “They put an AK on the back of my head and tried to get me out of the vehicle, I said I could get out alone, but they grabbed my hair, I tried to get up, but they kicked me in the shin and I fell again.”
He mentioned that later “the director of Police Intelligence arrived in Masaya” to witness his arrest. “One of the guys pointed it at my face again. They tied my hands and took off my shoes. They took me to the Nindirí Police station. While they had me in the tub (of the truck) they were kicking me in the stomach,” he said.
Pro-government groups made independent arrests
The Group documented that members of pro-government armed groups “also carried out arrests apparently autonomously in the context of the 2018 demonstrations, and later handed over the detainees to the National Police.”
“In some cases, people were transferred to unofficial places of detention, where they were tortured and interrogated before being handed over to the Police,” the report revealed.
A young woman interviewed by the GHREN said that she was traveling with other young people when their vehicle was intercepted by paramilitaries who “began to shoot at the vehicle.”
“In a matter of minutes, a small car arrived from which armed and hooded paramilitaries came out. They started yelling at us and telling us: ‘Now they can’t escape.’ They lined us up and pointed their weapons at us. They started shouting furiously: ‘Where are the weapons?’ They said that if we didn’t tell them where the weapons were, they were going to kill us,” he narrated.
The young woman mentioned that they took their phones and searched the vehicle, then they were handcuffed with shoelaces. “To me, one of them told me ‘we are going to rape you and then we are going to kill you.’ While he was tying my hands, one grabbed my hair, lifted me into the air, and threw me to the ground so that I was face down on the floor,” she explained.
Arrests also in houses of opponents
The GHREN findings reveal that there were also selective apprehensions of opponents or people perceived as such that were carried out in “public spaces, offices, residential houses or in safe houses where people were sheltered.”
The report mentions that “often these detainees had been subjected to surveillance, intelligence activities, intimidation and threats, for weeks or months before their arrest.”
In at least 25 cases investigated by the GHREN, they verified that “the arrests were carried out with a disproportionate presence of police forces, with deployments that included elements of the DOEP and hooded people in civilian clothes” and determined that in these operations there was “a pattern violations of due process and violence”.
“About 40 DOEP riot police knocked down the door and entered my house. They entered from all sides, fell like ants from the ceiling, climbed over the wall, destroyed the flowers. They pushed me, I couldn’t even count the number of police cars that were parked outside the house (…). They took several personal things, my camera, video camera, my radios, my tape recorders,” said one of the victims.
The GHREN report highlights that during many of the arrests and raids, the police agents “also attacked the detainees and the people present in the buildings, including family members and elderly people.”
“Several boys and girls were present during the violent captures of their relatives and the raids and searches that followed,” the report alerts.
One of the testimonies collected by the experts indicates that more than ten police officers arrived at a house to make an arrest. “They handcuffed my grandmother who was in a wheelchair and suffers from dementia and the domestic worker. I got a cookie (blow on the head) that I fell to the floor. They handcuffed me so hard that it hurt,” she recounted.
Another citizen explained that during an operation at his home, his 79-year-old father “was beaten, thrown to the ground,” while his mother “began to scream until she passed out.” It was not until a day later that he found out that his sister was in El Chipote and a month later he was transferred to La Modelo.