Mauricio Alonso Petri’s family spent 38 days in a desperate search, visiting prisons controlled by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s regime and even hospitals, but found no answers. No authority admitted to his whereabouts. He had been missing since July 18, when, on the eve of the 46th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, a police squad abducted him along with his wife and son for being deemed critics of the government. On the morning of August 25, the family’s anguish ended in their worst fear: the Institute of Forensic Medicine summoned them to identify his body. The 64-year-old had finally surfaced, but dead.
Petri was captured during the mass raids launched by the co-presidency in the departments of Carazo, Granada, Masaya, and Rivas. The Blue and White Monitoring Group reported that at least 28 people, five entire families among them, remain detained under “enforced disappearance.” This was also the case for Petri and his son, Mauricio Alonso Estrada, while his wife was released the same day they were taken.
From that day forward, his wife began an unrelenting search for her husband. In the past, Petri had ties to the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) in Jinotepe, though he later left for “personal reasons.” He was also close to retired Major Roberto Samcam, who was assassinated on June 19 in exile in San José, Costa Rica, in an operation that sources linked to the case allege was orchestrated from Managua by the Army’s Intelligence Directorate.
Although he suffered from heart problems and had retired from political life, Petri was caught up in the raid along with his son, a member of the worship team led by evangelical pastor Rudy Palacios, who was also detained and disappeared in Jinotepe.
Divergentes confirmed Petri’s death through various police and forensic sources. On the morning of August 25, only his wife was allowed inside to view the body. A source close to the case explained: “What they told the family is that the man felt unwell and they took him to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. That the police were being kind and brought him there to be treated and that he died there, in the morgue. But who believes that? Why wouldn’t they take him to a hospital for treatment? Who brings someone to Forensic Medicine for first aid?”
According to the source, the family was never told where Petri had been held. However, police sources indicate that those captured in the raids are taken to District Three, cells similar to those at El Chipote, where human rights organizations report torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Not the First to Die in Custody
The family has decided not to make public statements out of fear of reprisals, especially since Petri’s son remains missing under enforced disappearance, according to the Blue and White Monitoring Group. It was learned that, under government pressure, Petri will be buried in Jinotepe in a hasty, controlled funeral.
Petri is not the first to die in Ortega-Murillo custody. Others have perished under similar circumstances, including Eddy Montes at La Modelo prison, retired General Hugo Torres at El Chipote, and even Daniel Ortega’s own brother, retired General Humberto Ortega Saavedra.
Claudia Pineda, director of the Association for Legal Defense, Registry, and Memory, and spokesperson for the Blue and White Monitoring Group, denounced a new repressive tactic: the capture and disappearance of entire families. This practice, she warned, not only leaves children abandoned but also destroys household economies by imprisoning breadwinners.
According to Pineda, most of those detained had participated in the April 2018 protests and were linked to activities around the San José School in Jinotepe, Carazo, confiscated by the regime and reopened under the name “Bismarck Martínez School,” in honor of a Sandinista supporter the dictatorship claims was killed in 2018.