Nicaraguan families beg for answers as dissenters vanish into state custody

Thelma Brenes grew worried when her father in Nicaragua did not return her messages.

Retired Army Colonel Carlos Brenes, 71, lived ​with his wife, Salvadora Martinez, 69, on a rural property south of the capital Managua. Brenes' daughter Thelma, ‌living ​in the Netherlands, asked a neighbor to check on the couple. He found the house empty. Local residents later told her they’d seen the police escorting the couple away in a patrol car.

That was August 2025. Since then, the Brenes family have pleaded with the authorities for information about the couple’s whereabouts, health and status, but they have heard nothing, not even if they are in custody. What they do know is that Carlos Brenes is one of President Daniel Ortega's most outspoken critics. ‌Martinez is a homemaker with no known political involvement.

"For us, as family members, this is a form of torture," said Thelma Brenes. She is one of growing number of Nicaraguans who say their loved ones have been forcibly disappeared by the government of Ortega. The leader rose to prominence in the leftist Sandinista movement in the 1970s, battling to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship that itself arrested and forcibly disappeared suspected dissidents.

One of those who fought alongside Ortega was Carlos Brenes. After Somoza's 1979 ousting, Ortega ruled the country, first as provisional government leader and then as president. He returned to office in 2007, and has ruled Nicaragua continuously since then. During this time, the United Nations, international human ‌rights groups and regional leaders say, he has consolidated an increasingly authoritarian system, especially since anti-government protests in 2018.

The Nicaraguan government did not answer detailed questions regarding the Brenes and Martinez case. The Interior Ministry, Attorney General's Office and the Nicaraguan Army did not respond to requests for comment. TOOL 'TO SOW FEAR'

Human rights groups ‌like Memoria y Justicia, led by Nicaraguans in exile, and relatives of political prisoners said that at least 68 people were imprisoned in Nicaragua for political reasons as of the end of September, including 31 victims of enforced disappearance. The UN defines enforced disappearance as the deprivation of liberty by agents of the state, followed by concealment of the person’s whereabouts.

Family members told Reuters that the Nicaraguan authorities offer no justification for the detentions: they rarely confirm an arrest, schedule court hearings, or provide information to families. People simply vanish. Last month, three UN experts asked to investigate human rights in Nicaragua said they had documented imprisonment, torture and persecution on political grounds as part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians.

According to the UN experts, at least eight people detained for political reasons have died in state ⁠custody since the political crackdown ​began in 2018. They said they have verified 161 cases of enforced disappearance since ⁠April 2018, ranging from a few days to several years. The Ortega government has dismissed critics as "fascists" and "coup mongers" and has not commented on the accusations of disappearances. The UN said it has received no official response from Managua to requests for comment sent since 2018.

"The government uses enforced disappearance as a deliberate strategy: to sow fear not only among the detained person, but also among their family members, ⁠and to warn the entire society: ‘This could happen to you,’" said Reed Brody, a member of the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua. The tactic is not new to Latin America. In previous decades, military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and other countries carried out enforced disappearances as part of widespread repression to keep the regimes in power.

'NO ONE HAS ​SEEN HIM IN MORE THAN TWO YEARS' As a student, Carlos Brenes joined the protests against Anastasio Somoza, the last of a family clan that ruled Nicaragua for four decades. Brenes enlisted in the revolutionary Sandinista National Liberation Front and helped plan the insurrection that overthrew the dictatorship in 1979.

But ⁠around 1992, he became disillusioned with Ortega and retired from the Army. In 2018, he once again joined mass protests — this time against the Sandinista government. He was jailed on terrorism charges and released after 10 months. Then, in 2025, he disappeared. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights said in an April report that it had been informed unofficially that Brenes and his wife were tried for treason and sentenced to ⁠15 ​years in prison. The family said they were not informed of the proceedings and feared for Brenes' health because he suffers from diabetic neuropathy.

The Court called on the Nicaraguan government to protect the lives of the couple and other political prisoners and provide information about their whereabouts. The Nicaraguan government has not replied. Brenes is not the only ex-Sandinista who has disappeared.

Victor Boitano, 65, the son of an Italian father and a Nicaraguan mother, joined the guerrilla movement at the age of 12, inspired by the example of his mother, who was tortured by the Somoza dictatorship for her political activism. During the revolution, he trained at military academies and rose ⁠to the rank of colonel in the Army, but retired in 2007 and began to accuse the Sandinista government of corruption and political crimes. In April 2024, armed police and plainclothes officers arrested him without a warrant at his home in Managua, said his wife, Eugenia Valle, who witnessed the event and says she ⁠was hit by an officer during her husband's arrest. He disappeared into the prison system. Valle ⁠went from one prison to the next trying to find him, but said the guards always directed her elsewhere.

The Nicaraguan Presidency, Interior Ministry, Attorney General's Office and the Army did not respond to a series of detailed questions regarding Boitano's case. Six months after his disappearance, Valle fled the country after her housekeeper called her and told her there were some 30 police officers surrounding her house.

Now in exile in Italy, she said she barely sleeps three hours a night and is racked ‌by worry over the fate of her husband, who ‌suffers from hypertension and diabetes. "We don't know what's happening, how he is, or where he is," said Valle. "No one has seen him in more than two years."

(Reporting ​by Gabriela Selser and Diego Oré, Editing by Laura Gottesdiener and Rosalba O'Brien)