Pastor Manuel Ríos weighed approximately 260lbs before being arrested by the police under the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. He had spent years collaborating with the Puerta de la Montaña (Mountain Gateway) church, a U.S. organization that became a target of repression in December 2023.
After nearly nine months in Nicaraguan prisons, 54-year-old Ríos lost about 90lbs due to the conditions he was subjected to in jail. For seven and a half months, he was isolated in a cell, unable to speak to anyone. His family was denied information about him and was not allowed to visit him since his arrest on December 17, 2023.
The other 12 members of the Puerta de la Montaña church — 10 pastors and 2 lawyers — who were also arrested, had no contact with their families either. Their relatives only learned about them on September 5, when they were banished to Guatemala as part of a group of 135 political prisoners from the regime.
“It was a complex, difficult situation… I was imprisoned under extreme conditions in a maximum-security cell, where you have no access to anything or anyone. Completely isolated,” said Manuel Ríos, who has been a pastor for 38 years, during an interview with DIVERGENTES in a hotel lobby in Guatemala City.
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Repression against Puerta de la Montaña
Puerta de la Montaña was founded in Nicaragua by missionaries from Texas, USA, in 2012. By December of last year, they had established churches in 15 rural communities. Pastor Manuel Ríos collaborated with them through the Ejército de Dios church, which he led in Managua.
Amid the Sandinista regime’s crackdown on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua following the political crisis of 2018, Puerta de la Montaña was one of the few religious organizations that received government permits to hold large gatherings. Last year, they held 15 events in eight cities across the country, spending 4 million dollars. This year, they had approval for 13 similar events.
The leaders of Puerta de la Montaña had good relationships with Sandinista officials. In 2019, a year after the crisis, they even prayed with officers of the National Police, an institution sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury for human rights violations against protesters and opposition citizens. Official media outlets also provided extensive coverage of their religious events.
Massive events “caused discontent”
Pastor Manuel Ríos says they worked with government permits, “along with mayors, police, and Sandinista politicians” to organize evangelical events.
Their last major event took place in Managua on the nights of November 10 and 11, as part of the closing of the “Good News Crusades Nicaragua 2023.” It is estimated that around 325,000 people attended. Puerta de la Montaña spent 800,000 dollars and hired 3,000 buses to transport attendees, according to a report from The New York Times.
Four weeks later, the 13 members of the Puerta de la Montaña church were arrested. The organization was shut down, and its assets, worth 5 million dollars, were confiscated by the Ortega regime.
The founders of the church owned a coffee farm that exported to Texas, where the Hancock family, the church’s founding family, is from. In Managua, they purchased a house valued at 600,000 dollars for the missionaries, and they owned 47 vehicles.
For Jon Britton Hancock, founder and president of Puerta de la Montaña, the regime’s crackdown on them may have been due to the church’s large support in Nicaragua, which was perceived as “a threat” to both Ortega and Murillo.
Pastor Manuel Ríos shares a similar view: “The church’s massive events caused some discontent, even with government permits and approval.”
“They threw me in a cell, and I never saw the sun again”
One of Puerta de la Montaña’s 47 vehicles was assigned to Pastor Manuel Ríos, who coordinated the evangelical events. On December 14, he received a call from Victoriano Ruíz, head of the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ) in Managua, asking him to hand over the car as part of the confiscation. The pastor went to turn in the vehicle and was asked to sign some documents.
However, 72 hours later, at 12:15 p.m. on Sunday, December 17, while he was preaching in Matagalpa, the police called again, requesting he come to the station for a 20-minute interview. “Those 20 minutes turned into nine months in prison,” says Ríos, still angry. “Without a warrant, without any valid questioning… they simply threw me in a cell, and I never saw the sun again.”
That night, at 9:00 p.m., he was transferred to the District III Police Station in Managua, where he was interrogated from 11:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. “They accused us of different things: first, they said we were recruiting and arming people,” Ríos recalls. He even found the accusation amusing, noting, “Yes, we gathered people, but to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, organizing with pastors from each region. Our weapons are God’s words; we don’t even use nail clippers,” the pastor quips.
Less than 12 hours after the intense interrogation, Ríos and the other pastors were taken to the courts in Managua, where they were told they would remain in custody for 90 days while investigations proceeded.
Later that day, they were transferred to La Modelo prison, where seven pastors were placed in one cell, while three others, including Ríos, were confined to separate, isolated cells surrounded by guards and police dogs. Ríos remained in one of these solitary cells for seven and a half months.
“I was never allowed visits, food packages, communication with anyone, or legal defense… absolutely nothing,” Ríos laments.
“Arming people” against the Ortega-Murillo regime
According to Pastor Ríos, during the trial, they were accused of “arming people against the government.” But when that accusation didn’t stick, they were charged with money laundering. “The accusations were absurd, with no foundation.”
Nicaraguan police eventually accused members of Puerta de la Montaña of recruiting farmers from northern Nicaragua, appointing them as evangelical pastors “to create the illusion that these organizations were helping the Nicaraguan people.”
Police claimed this was a lie to “acquire vehicles, residential farms, and conduct business.” They also alleged that the church was moving large sums of money of unknown origin.
The members were sentenced to between 12 and 15 years in prison and fined over 80 million dollars each for alleged money laundering and fraud.
U.S. Congress intervened for the release of Puerta de la Montaña members
The church’s founder, Jon Hancock, denied the charges, calling them “false.” He said the regime had closely monitored the church’s transactions since their arrival in Nicaragua and explained that most of the assets were acquired through donations from the U.S. and other countries.
Hancock spent months lobbying members of Congress, the State Department, and religious groups to help free the imprisoned pastors. After their release, Hancock said, “This is the day we’ve been praying and believing in God for.” He noted that members of Congress, the State Department, and Homeland Security “worked tirelessly to secure their release from unjust imprisonment.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that U.S. officials had been negotiating for the release of the 13 members of Puerta de la Montaña, and in a unilateral decision, the Ortega regime added another 122 political prisoners to the list.
“I didn’t receive special treatment” despite my health condition
Manuel Ríos walks around the hotel leaning on crutches. He finds a chair, sits down, places the crutches in front of him, and stretches his legs. He suffers from necrosis in his left leg and has used crutches since 2016 when he fell off a stage while preaching.
Ríos was also diagnosed with metastatic cancer in his liver and received radiotherapy for months. However, the treatment and the fall damaged the bones in his lower back. “For a time, I was fed like a child, and I had no strength left. I couldn’t get out of bed,” he recalls.
After several tests, doctors found no trace of cancer. “God healed me,” he asserts. Free from cancer treatments, he began recovering from his back problems. In some Facebook photos, Ríos can be seen preaching in a wheelchair or using crutches.
In prison, he says, there was “no special consideration” for his condition. “These people (the Ortega-Murillo regime) don’t care about your health, condition, or age… I didn’t receive any special treatment, and I don’t believe anyone in La Modelo does either. I saw elderly men who had lost their lower limbs and were still imprisoned,” the pastor notes.
In the cell where Ríos spent seven months, there was only a hole to defecate and another where water, often dirty, would come out for bathing or drinking. He believes this led to a stomach bacteria that still makes him vomit since he couldn’t receive treatment in prison.Due to the unsanitary conditions in the space where he was held, his right buttock became infected, and to treat it, the pus was drained using syringes.
His three daily meals consisted of rice and beans, and on some days, he was served a few scraps of chicken with squash or small pieces of liver.
After seven months of isolation, he was moved to a cell with the other 10 pastors. The main improvement was having company and a bit more space, but the conditions remained “difficult.”
To endure the days, the religious group practiced fasting, prayed, held daily morning devotions to strengthen other inmates, and shared hopeful testimonies. “The love of Christ and faith in Jesus Christ were the only things that sustained me… Faith holds you up, faith helps you, faith liberates you; faith is what keeps you from giving in to situations like this,” the pastor emphasizes.
“Did your faith ever waver?” I ask him.
“I’ll be honest with you. Cancer didn’t break me. Prison didn’t break me. But there was one thing that hurt me deeply: being deprived of my right, at the very least, to see my family, even from a distance. That hurt me more than being imprisoned for nine months.”
In the hotel in Guatemala, Manuel Ríos looks aged compared to the photos taken before his imprisonment. He speaks slowly but without hesitation. He says he’s bewildered by how radically his living conditions changed overnight. In fact, during the first days of exile, he struggled to sleep well, as he’s still adjusting to living in “a dignified place” again: a bed with clean sheets, a toilet just for him, and a shower with hot water.
Food is another adjustment he’s experiencing now. Since the portions in prison were so small, he can’t finish a full plate from the hotel buffet. When he sees and smells the trays of food, he wants to eat everything, but he gets full quickly.