Carlos Alberto Vanegas Gomez was arrested on January 26, 2022 for the alleged common crime of robbery with violence. Police convicted him for allegedly breaking into a house and taking household appliances.
Vanegas Gomez, 33, was one of the 35 unidentified political prisoners who were not exiled to the United States along with the 222 political prisoners on February 9, 2023; they were later denationalized.
In 2018, Vanegas Gómez, a native of Masaya, was accused of the crimes of organized crime, murder, desecration of corpses, robbery with intimidation, extortion, increased claims for damages and illegal possession of weapons to the detriment of the State of Nicaragua and the police officer Gabriel Vado.
The police institution at the service of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo said he was a demonstrator and leader of the “armed” roadblock in the city of Masaya, where Lieutenant Gabriel de Jesús Vado was murdered.
“This subject was a leader of a roadblock in the city of Masaya and together with other people, on July 14, they kidnapped Police Lieutenant Gabriel de Jesús Vado Ruiz and then took him to the armed roadblock in front of the cemetery of the municipality of Niquinohomo. “They tied him to a power pole to torture him,” an official channel said in 2018.
Release of political prisoners
Vanegas Gomez, along with 34 other prisoners, were not exiled to the United States. After this surprising event, according to various analysts, Ortega spoke out on the night of February 9 and assured that his actions were not part of a political agreement with the United States in return for the lifting of sanctions imposed on the regime.
“We breathe peace now, thank God,” Ortega added after the banishment of these former prisoners held in various prisons in the country. The most prominent were arrested in massive raids in 2021, including peasant leaders, students, activists, Sandinista Front dissidents and recognized businessmen, among others.
In 2018, Vanegas Gomez was arrested along with eight other demonstrators protesting crimes committed by the Ortega regime since civil protests began that same year. At that point, police confiscated a .38 caliber revolver and ammunition from Ortega.
