Nicaragua Used Disappearances to Crush Dissent as Eight Died in Custody, UN Reports

The report, The Anatomy of State Cruelty, presents 17 illustrative cases drawn from 161 enforced disappearances documented since 2018 and names several of the 29 people whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Nicaragua's government has used enforced disappearance to silence opponents and tighten its grip on the population, according to a new report by the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, which documents people being taken into custody and cut off from the protections that could keep them alive. The experts found that the government was responsible for the deaths of eight people detained on political grounds since 2018, including Humberto Ortega, the brother of Co-President Daniel Ortega, and Brooklyn Rivera, a prominent Miskito Indigenous leader whose family was denied the chance to say goodbye before his burial.

Disappearance leaves families without answers

The report, The Anatomy of State Cruelty, presents 17 illustrative cases drawn from 161 enforced disappearances documented since 2018 and names several of the 29 people whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown. Its findings describe disastrous detention conditions, inadequate access to health care and the vulnerability of people held under state control, where isolation can leave detainees without anyone outside the prison system able to verify their condition or press for treatment. For families, that secrecy means being denied even basic information about where their relatives are and whether they are alive.

The experts found that Ortega and Co-President Rosario Murillo exercised centralized control over the police, prisons and courts, the institutions responsible for protecting people against such abuses. Diagrams in the report trace those chains of command, connecting individual cases to the structures through which power is exercised. The findings place responsibility within a system directed from the top, giving investigators a clearer account of how these institutions operated.

Brooklyn Rivera's death raises unanswered questions

Rivera, a 73-year-old former legislator and founder of the YATAMA political party, was arbitrarily detained for nearly three years, including two prolonged periods of enforced disappearance, before authorities announced his death on 31 May 2026. The experts assessed five government statements about his declining health and death, drawing on an independent medical review by Physicians for Human Rights, and found contradictions and critical medical inconsistencies that could not be checked because no independent investigation or autopsy had taken place.

The Group concluded that the presumption of state responsibility for a death in custody had gone entirely unrebutted, meaning the government had failed to explain or answer that responsibility. Expert member Reed Brody accused the authorities of taking Rivera's freedom, health and life, criticizing their refusal to permit an independent autopsy and the speed of his burial before his family could say goodbye. The Group called for Rivera's remains to be returned to his family and community so they can perform burial rites in accordance with Miskito tradition.

Experts press for action beyond Nicaragua

The report will be presented alongside the Group's oral update to the UN Human Rights Council, with the experts linking its findings to Ortega's announcement two months earlier that Nicaragua would hold no further competitive elections. Group Chair Jan-Michael Simon compared democracy to a house whose roof depends on foundations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, arguing that enforced disappearance and deaths in state custody undermine the minimum conditions needed for credible democratic governance.

The Group demanded disclosure of the fate and whereabouts of all 29 people still disappeared, the unconditional release of everyone detained on political grounds and investigations into every death in custody that meet international human rights requirements. Its appeal to other governments called for international cooperation and criminal investigations using territorial and universal jurisdiction. After almost four years of work, the experts said understanding the abuses was no longer the central challenge; responding to them was. Expert member Ariela Peralta said the names, structures and evidence now on record give governments and prosecutors a basis to pursue accountability wherever possible.