Nicaragua released 135 political prisoners — including 13 people affiliated with an American evangelical church — on humanitarian grounds on Thursday in a deal brokered by the U.S. government, the White House announced.
The prisoners were sent to Guatemala, where they will be processed as refugees.
The prisoner release included 11 pastors from Mountain Gateway, a Texas-based evangelical missionary church that the Nicaraguan government had accused of using its nonprofit status as a cover to purchase luxury goods, property and land.
The group also included Catholic laypeople, students, and others whom President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and the first lady and vice president, Rosario Murillo, considered a threat to their authoritarian rule, Jake Sullivan, the National Security adviser, said in a statement.
“The United States again calls on the government of Nicaragua to immediately cease the arbitrary arrest and detention of its citizens for merely exercising their fundamental freedoms,” Mr. Sullivan added.
Once in Guatemala, the former prisoners will be offered the opportunity to apply for legal ways to rebuild their lives in the United States or in other countries, Mr. Sullivan said. The Biden administration expressed thanks to the president of Guatemala, Bernado Arévalo, for his government’s cooperation in the deal and for “championing democratic freedom.”
The Mountain Gateway pastors were arrested in December after completing an eight-city evangelical crusade that cost $4 million and was attended by nearly a million people. The pastors were sentenced to 12 or 15 years in prison, and fined a total of nearly $1 billion.
Two lawyers representing them were also convicted and imprisoned.
“This is the day we have been praying and believing God for,” said Jon Britton Hancock, founder and president of Mountain Gateway. “Members of Congress, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security worked tirelessly to effect their release from their unjust imprisonment.”
Mr. Hancock, who was charged but never arrested, enlisted members of Congress, particularly Representative Robert Aderholt, Republican of Alabama, to urge the ministers’ release.
Ryan Fayhee, a partner at the legal firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld who represented the pastors, said, “This seems to be part of a trend: expelling religious people and church leadership.”
Referring to Nicaragua, he added, “I’m hopeful it’ll be a safer place moving forward, where people can choose to exercise fundamental human rights, like exercising choice of religion and gathering.”
Marisela Mejía, 34, a minister and administrator of Mountain Gateway, had just given birth when she was arrested. She and her husband, Walner O. Blandón, the mission’s lead pastor, were sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $80 million each. Their two children, both born in the United States, stayed with relatives in Nicaragua during their parents’ incarceration and were allowed to join them in Guatemala.
Ever since hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 2018 in a quest to topple the government, Mr. Ortega has presided over a harsh crackdown on free speech and other rights. He viewed the popular uprising as an attempted coup, and penalized activists, journalists, politicians and others, accusing them of terrorism and other charges.
Initially, the crackdown was largely aimed at dissidents, but it then grew to include the closure of organizations, like Mountain Gateway, that had never spoken out against the government.
In January, the government released Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who had been detained for over a year; another Catholic bishop; two seminarians; and 15 priests. They were sent to the Vatican.
In February 2023, the United States accepted 222 political prisoners, including a former foreign minister, student leaders and presidential candidates.
It was unclear Thursday morning who else was on the list of newly freed prisoners.
Religious freedom organizations and human rights activists say that the Nicaraguan government has been using anti-money-laundering statutes to shut down civil society organizations and churches. Before Thursday’s release, a total of 36 people were detained or imprisoned in Nicaragua for religious reasons, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
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