“No one has seen” political prisoner Santos Ariel Rodríguez Lagos, 46, since July 2024, friends of the Nicaraguan businessman said. The Ortega dictatorship has prohibited any family member or other close person from visiting him in La Modelo prison, in Tipitapa.
Rodríguez’s friends, who asked that their names be omitted for fear of reprisals from the dictatorship, “dared” to report the businessman’s case because they fear that something similar to what happened to the indigenous leader would happen. Brooklyn Rivera; political prisoner of the dictatorship whom they showed, in photographs, until he was prostrate and dying in a hospital in Managua.
“We demand from Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo proof of Santos Ariel’s life,” said one of the friends.
“In February or March (2026), someone close to the family, who was imprisoned, told them that he (Santos Rodríguez) was in poor health. That they had tried to kill him and that he was about to lose a foot because he caught an infection in an open wound,” explained the friend of the political prisoner.
He added that “not being able to see it, after everything that happened with Brooklyn (Rivera), the fear that what this person told us is true increased, because we already saw the state in which they showed Brooklyn.”
Santos Rodríguez was arrested on June 2, 2024 in the municipality of Jalapa, Nueva Segovia. A month later he was convicted in a spurious trial held by video call, and is currently detained in La Modelo.
Another of Rodríguez’s friends pointed out that, since his arrest, the Segovian businessman has only been seen “for five minutes” in the virtual trial. Process in which he was denied the right to private defense and there was no access to his judicial file in the Nicarao System.
Sandinistas took advantage of the family
The source indicated that, in an act of desperation, the businessman’s family paid some “regime authorities” to have Santos Rodríguez released from prison. However, the supposed middlemen took advantage of the situation.
“These people began to take any sum of money from them that you have no idea about. Extraordinarily large sums of money to help them, but they did nothing,” remarked the family friend.
Until February 2026, when they learned about his delicate state of health, they hoped that he would be released. But those hopes have been dissipated and that is why they decided to demand a “proof of life”.
The Reflection Group of Politically Released Prisoners (GREX) joined the calls for freedom for businessman Santos Ariel Rodríguez and warned that “the persecution of businessmen, even if they are not as well-known, is inevitable and all with the aim of stealing their assets.”
Missing and sick prisoners
Santos Rodríguez is part of the 46 political prisoners identified by the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners until May 31, 2026. Of all the prisoners of conscience, thirteen are older adults and nine remain in a condition of forced disappearance.
The organization emphasized the continuity of practices of state opacity regarding the whereabouts, integrity and detention conditions of a significant segment of the registered population.
Of the 46 political prisoners26% are members or leaders of indigenous communities, 21% are farmers, and 15% are people previously linked to the state apparatus or the ruling party, according to the information.
“This distribution reflects a repressive pattern with differentiated impacts: on the one hand, the high proportion of indigenous and peasant population is associated with dynamics of territorial control and weakening of community structures; on the other, the presence of people with previous links to the state apparatus or ruling party confirms an expansion of the profiles reached by political prison, beyond the traditional opposition, consolidating a more transversal reach,” he noted.
*With information from EFE.
