Ortega ‘using torture to quash dissent’ Nicaragua

Jaime Navarrete took to the streets outside his home in Managua, Nicaragua, to protest against Daniel Ortega, the country’s increasingly autocratic socialist president, in May this year.

One month later he paid for his activism as masked thugs crashed through his front door at 5am, beat him to the floor and looted his home before handing him to police to be tortured in the infamous El Chipote prison.

‘‘When I saw him, his neck and back were covered in burns, and his body bruised by beatings,’’ Navarrete’s mother, Margine Blandon, told The Daily Telegraph, on meeting her son after he was finally released.

A report launched yesterday by Amnesty International shows that Navarrete’s experience is far from isolated.

‘‘Torture is being used not solely as an instrument of punishment, but as a means of dissuading others from protesting,’’ says Carolina Jimenez, America’s deputy director for research at the human rights charity.

‘‘It is one element in a strategy of lethal repression intended to terrorise the population.’’

The report also covers the criminalisation of protesters, more than 400 of whom are in prison. Many are being tried under antiterror laws passed in July by the National Assembly.

The largely peaceful antigovernment protests that broke out in April were sparked by fiscal reforms cutting pensions and disability payments, as well as a decade of growing authoritarianism under president Ortega.

On Wednesday, a group of three student leaders were sentenced to 17 years in prison each on new terrorism charges, introduced in the midst of protests.

‘‘It is absurd that Nicaragua has gone from being the safest country in Central America to having more than 300 terrorists in jail,’’ Julio Montenegro, their lawyer, told The Telegraph.

Azahalea Solis, a member of the opposition Blue and White Alliance, said: ‘‘The struggle will continue. We’re far beyond the point of no return.’’