GENEVA/PANAMA – The Nicaraguan Government of Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has weaponized enforced disappearance to crush dissent and control the population, the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua said in a new report today.
The report found that, since 2018, the Government was responsible for the deaths in State custody of eight people detained on political grounds – including the brother of Ortega, Humberto Ortega, and Brooklyn Rivera, a Miskito indigenous leader. It also found the Government’s account of Rivera’s death full of contradictions.
The report will be presented in parallel with the Group’s oral update to the Human Rights Council. The Experts noted that Co-President Ortega’s announcement two months ago that there would be no further competitive elections in Nicaragua only underscores what this report documents: the systematic dismantling of the rights and freedoms on which democratic governance depends.
The report, The Anatomy of State Cruelty, underscores disastrous detention conditions, lack of access to health care and the vulnerability of many victims. It presents 17 illustrative cases of disappearance – out of 161 since 2018 – and names several of the 29 persons who remain disappeared.
“Democracy is like a house. Elections are its roof. Human rights and fundamental freedoms are its foundations. Without those foundations, the roof cannot stand,” said Jan-Michael Simon, Chair of the Group. “A State that resorts to enforced disappearance and allows persons to die in its custody falls short of the minimum human rights standards required for credible democratic governance.
The report examined the case of Mr. Rivera, a 73-year-old former legislator and founder of the YATAMA political party, who was held arbitrarily for nearly three years – including two long periods of enforced disappearance – before authorities announced his death on 31 May 2026.
The Group’s assessment of five Government’s public statements in Rivera’s last days about his declining health and death and of an independent medical review by Physicians for Human Rights found those statements “mutually inconsistent, medically incoherent in critical respects, and shielded from verification by the absence of any independent investigation or autopsy.” It further found that the presumption of State responsibility attaching to any death in custody had “gone entirely unrebutted.”
“The Nicaraguan Government took Brooklyn Rivera’s freedom, then his health, then his life,” said Reed Brody, an expert member of the Group. “Its explanation for what happened to him is riddled with inconsistencies and undermined by its refusal to allow an independent autopsy and its rush to bury him before his family could even say goodbye.”
The Group found that Ortega and Murillo exercised centralized control over the very institutions – police, prisons, and the courts – meant to protect people from exactly this kind of abuse. The report includes diagrams mapping these chains of command.
The Group called on the Government of Nicaragua to immediately disclose the fate and whereabouts of the 29 people still disappeared, unconditionally release all persons detained on political grounds and conduct investigations into all deaths in custody in line with international human rights law. It also called on the Government to return Mr. Rivera’s remains to his family and community for burial rites in accordance with Miskito tradition.
The Group urged the international community to pursue a multi-pronged approach to accountability including international cooperation, territorial and universal criminal jurisdiction.
After almost four years of this mandate, the Experts stressed, the facts are clear: the challenge is no longer to understand the situation, but to respond to it.
“The Group has now put names, structures and evidence on the record,” said Ariela Peralta, an expert member of the Group. “Governments and prosecutors around the world have what they need to act, wherever accountability can be pursued.”
