Scholars Juan Sebastián Chamorro García and Félix Alejandro Maradiaga Blandón were among the more than 200 Nicaraguans released from jail on February 9, 2023, and flown to the United States as part of a diplomatic arrangement between the two countries with the detainees’ consent. Those released include academics, opposition leaders, civil society representatives, journalists, and university students, who are widely considered to have been detained for exercising their fundamental human rights. Many had been held under deplorable conditions of confinement without access to needed medical care. Following their release, the individuals were deported and banned from returning to Nicaragua. Immediately after their release, the country’s National Assembly voted to revoke their citizenship—in violation of international human rights norms—after passing a hasty reform to Nicaragua’s Political Constitution. Media reports indicate that the U.S. government has granted them humanitarian parole, a two-year process that allows foreigners to enter the country and apply for asylum. The Spanish government has offered all of them citizenship.

Dr. Chamorro, an economist and former vice minister of finance, has taught at several Nicaraguan universities and led an economics think tank. Mr. Maradiaga, a renewable energy engineer, has dedicated his professional life to public service and civil society work in support of human rights, nonviolence, and disarmament. Following the government’s violent crackdown on the 2018 mass popular protests, both men became active in the opposition movement and, in early 2021, announced their plans to run in the November 2021 presidential election. Several months later, Dr. Chamorro and Mr. Maradiaga were arrested; they were among seven opposition presidential candidates and several dozen other civil society advocates taken into government custody in the run-up to the general election. In proceedings that failed to meet international fair trial standards, both men were convicted on spurious national security-related charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison in early 2022.

Dr. Chamorro and Mr. Maradiaga were held under abusive conditions of confinement including being enforcedly disappeared for nearly three months, subjected to isolation, forced to sleep on a concrete slab, and given inadequate amounts of food, resulting in significant weight loss. Both men were refused access to needed medical care and permitted only two brief telephone calls with their wives and children, who reside outside of the country due to safety concerns. We are heartened that they have been reunited with their families and are now able to access much-needed medical treatment, but we remain concerned about the blatant abuses of international human rights law associated with their imprisonment, expulsion, and arbitrary deprivation of citizenship.