The Vice Minister of the Interior, Luis Cañas Novoa, is a key player within the repressive regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The official was sanctioned by the United States Government, on April 18, 2026and is described by those who know him as a man capable of committing “anything” to achieve his goals. As Murillo’s operator in the Ministry of the Interior, those objectives are to repress the Nicaraguan population and execute the orders of the all-powerful “co-president” of Nicaragua.
Cañas has gained preponderance as the axis of the dictatorship’s exile machinery and part of Murillo’s circle of power. He also participates in a permanent surveillance system in the national territory and is in charge of transmitting Murillo’s orders, exercising true power in the Ministry of the Interior (MINT).
In his history, Cañas includes a dismissal for corruption in 2007, his subsequent promotion to the rank of commissioner general positions him as the fundamental piece for the implementation of the most repressive policies of the regime.
Right hand in the machinery of exile
Rosario Murillo’s right hand in the exile machinery, which decides who enters Nicaragua or not, is the Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Cañas Novoa. Identified as one of the 54 officials responsible for crimes against humanity of the dictatorship, by the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN).
The Group of Experts points out that, to deny entry to Nicaraguans, the vice minister requests information from the organizational secretary of the Sandinista Front, Fidel Moreno, who directs a surveillance network within the country, with the support of the Police Intelligence Directorate and the Telecommunications and Postal Institute (Telcor). Moreno creates a profile of the person and with that information, the vice minister decides whether or not the person enters Nicaragua.
Cañas also participated in the exile of the 222 political prisoners sent to the United States, in 2023, and the 135 sent to Guatemala, in 2024. The official ordered the issuance of their passports without these people having requested it. The documents were delivered personally by the vice minister.
Luis Cañas in Murillo’s new rings of power
Among the new rings of power from Rosario Murillo to guarantee his dynastic succession, Cañas is located as one of the closest. He is the one who exercises true power in the Ministry of the Interior, above the authority of Minister María Amelia Coronel.
Since the end of 2024, Cañas has also regularly occupied a chair at the dictators’ main table and is one of the most visible operators, despite the fact that in the beginning he was a man who stayed a little more in the shadows.
According to the Group of Experts, the vice minister occupies “an important role” in the regime’s repressive infrastructure.
According to a newspaper report by DivergentBefore taking the position of vice minister, Cañas organized a group of Sandinista ex-combatants, from whom he sought medical and economic support. Later, the group supported the 2018 repression, when the dictatorship armed paramilitaries to attack and massacre citizens who participated in the civic protests that year.
Surveillance and control in the national territory
Cañas’ work at the MINT also includes political surveillance and permanent control within the national territory.
The surveillance system allows the regime to control the information circulating in the country, make decisions about who should be monitored, detained, expelled from the national territory, prevented from returning to the country or stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality, details the UN Group of Experts.
Cañas has been the link between the Ministry of the Interior, the Police and the orders of El Carmen, the residence, party secretariat and office of the co-dictators Ortega and Murillo.
Until mid-2025, Cañas exercised that function through the former presidential security advisor, Néstor Moncada Lau, “purged” by Murillo in August 2025. After the fall of Moncada Lau, the vice minister now occupies a more visible role in the regime’s surveillance scheme.
Cañas is the one who receives direct orders from Ortega and Murillo and transmits them to the police surveillance apparatus. According to the Group of Experts, in April 2023, Murillo ordered the Police that “there should not be a fly flying without her realizing it.”
Corrupt police officer promoted to commissioner general
Cañas comes from a poor family in El Sauce, León. He joined the ranks of the Sandinista Front in the seventies as a combatant. He was a founding member of the National Police in the eighties and a decade later, in the nineties, he positioned himself in the area of anti-drug investigation.
He was also in charge of the police intelligence area in the early 2000s, but the first commissioner, Aminta Granera, removed him from the Police in 2007, because he was linked to corruption cases.
After leaving the Police, Cañas remained a civilian for eight years. In 2015 Moncada Lau recommended him to occupy the position of vice ministerreplacing Carlos Nájar. During his first year in office, Cañas operated in the shadows, but gained notoriety after the fall of Ana Isabel Morales (2016) as head of the Ministry of the Interior, renamed by Ortega in 2023 as the “Ministry of the Interior (MINT)”, as it was called in the 1980s.
Along with the resurrection of the MINT, the dictatorship imposed its direct subordination to the Policeestablishing the hierarchy of police grades in their general directorates. The new law established that the rank of vice minister is equivalent to the rank of commissioner general. Days later, Cañas was promoted.
Organizer of the mistreatment of political prisoners
The vice minister’s repression scheme extends to the National Penitentiary System (SPN). Cañas is accused by the Group of Experts of ordering “a systematic policy of discriminatory treatment against political prisoners.”
In addition, he instructed directors of penitentiary centers to “hinder the access of defense attorneys and disobey court orders for release and personal exposure.”
The instructions also include disobedience to court orders authorizing forensic medical evaluations and access to information about detention conditions, reinforcing a systematic pattern of impunity in the prison system, which obstructs accountability and allows abuses against detainees to continue, including dozens under conditions of forced disappearance.
In May 2019, after the murder in prison of political prisoner Eddy MontesCañas justified that Montes was shot while struggling with one of the sentries during an attempted riot at La Modelo prison. However, the political prisoners who witnessed the incident refute the official version and claim that it was a direct shot.
NGO cancellation manager
Cañas also executed direct orders from co-president Murillo to cancel the legal personality of NGOs or non-profit organizations. In addition, the Group of Experts points out that he requested Murillo’s authorization to cancel the legal personality of organizations that he himself selects.
In an interview on October 9, 2024, Cañas justified the cancellations by stating that the money sent to NGOs was used to attack public order in the country.
“A high percentage of these non-profit organizations were without activity even for decades. They had never presented any type of requirements that they have to do. Fundamentally the financial statements. Here there were organizations that received navigable amounts of money and that were never held accountable. And the donors of dubious origin or existence were not interested. They did know that this money was going to attack the order and security of the country. And it had to be protected,” said Cañas.
Denial of passports and stripping of nationality
Cañas is also identified as the main person responsible, along with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the State policy to deny the issuance or renewal of passports to opponents inside and outside of Nicaragua.
Other damages include the annulment or erasure of official data records, including birth certificates, a fact that according to the UN Group of Experts leads to the arbitrary deprivation of nationality for political reasons.
Nicaraguans who are denied these rights are people identified by the regime’s intelligence network, which coordinates the collection of personal, family, employment and other information on people considered a threat to national sovereignty and society.
In this structure, Fidel Moreno coordinates with the Civil Registry and with the civil registry area of the mayors to order the deletion of civil records. Based on this information, in consultation with Murillo, Vice Minister Cañas decides who to deprive of their nationality.
