UPDATE 2-Nicaragua releases prisoners, national dialog starts

The Nicaraguan government on Wednesday released dozens of people the opposition considers political prisoners, a human rights group said, hours before government and opposition leaders were due to restart talks aimed at ending a national crisis. Pablo Cuevas, an attorney for the Permanent Commission of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, said the detainees began leaving penitentiaries in the morning.

Nicaragua has been in a deep political crisis since President Daniel Ortega attempted social security reform last year, leading to massive protests. The ensuing chaos put the poor Central American nation in recession. Ortega, a Cold War era former guerilla fighter who won elected office in 2006, unleashed a brutal government crackdown. Some 320 people were killed and more than 600 imprisoned, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In retaliation, the United States has ramped up sanctions on Ortega's allies and family and limited Nicaragua's access to financing. U.S. President Donald Trump predicted this month that "the days of socialism" were numbered in Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Television images showed mini-buses apparently carrying released prisoners in the streets of the capital, Managua. Another rights group said some of the released prisoners would remain under house arrest.

One of the buses carried marathon runner Alex Vanegas, an outspoken Ortega critic who was arrested in November. "I'll keep running for freedom in Nicaragua, I don't care if they imprison me again," Vanegas shouted from the window of the vehicle.

Talks began on Wednesday between the government, business representatives, students and opposition politicians, seeking a resolution to the crisis that has engulfed Nicaragua since last spring. Ortega did not take part. "Today is to discuss who will mediate and who will facilitate," said Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a negotiator in the opposition camp.

The government's last attempt at dialog with the opposition was in May, but the talks collapsed when protesters demanded early elections. The protests faded under the crackdown, but independent journalists, rights groups and political activists report ongoing harassment and arrests that have led many to flee the country. The economy contracted by 4 percent in 2018.

Lawmakers from Ortega's Sandinista party on Wednesday approved a law raising taxes, the Congress TV station showed. The law had been opposed by businesses who argued they needed a stimulus to revive the economy. The opposition is calling for electoral reform and justice for those killed in the protests, but the most pressing demand is the release prisoners, opposition leader Angel Rocha said last week. (Reporting by Ismael Lopez; writing by Julia Love; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Grant McCool)