Extending a summer streak of detaining opposition candidates for the country's November presidential election, Nicaraguan authorities this week put former Miss Nicaragua, and vice presidential hopeful, Berenice Quezada under house arrest.
She was then released pending her trial on charges of “terrorism" — an accusation human rights groups say is simply Nicaraguan regime code for daring to take on authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
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Quezada announced last week she was running for vice president in the Nov. 7 election as the running mate of Oscar Sobalvarro. He recently declared his candidacy for the opposition Citizens Alliance for Liberty Party after all of its potential presidential candidates were arrested in the past two months.
Quezada is the eighth opposition candidate to be detained since June and she is now ineligible to run in November. More than two dozen opposition leaders have been arrested in total this summer. All are charged with terrorism or treason under a new law essentially banning public criticism of the Ortega regime.
Rights groups call it the left-wing Ortega’s effort to eliminate any challenge to his election to a fourth five-year term.
The Biden Administration has levied new targeted economic sanctions on Ortega, his regime and his family as a result.
