One Nicaraguan guard pinned his hand to a table with his knee while another ripped out a nail with a pair of pliers. Opposition supporter Lenin Rojas, recently released from prison to house arrest, says he screamed in pain.
The 36-year-old says his cry was heard throughout the El Chipote prison in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua.
But his torturers weren’t finished.
“They started hitting me again. They left me almost unconscious, they put me back in that same position, and ripped out two more nails,” said the father of four, showing his mutilated fingers.
He was one of 235 prisoners freed last month as part of a deal brokered between the main opposition alliance and the government to restart stalled peace talks, a year after protests against President Daniel Ortega’s government broke out in Nicaragua.
Four months of brutal crackdown by authorities left 325 people dead and another 800 locked up.
“The beatings got ever more brutal to the point that I asked them to kill me, to put a bullet in me, rather than continuing to torture me.
“They were annoyed at not getting a reply to their questions… an inspector said they were going to throw all of us — the arrested demonstrators — into the crater of the Masaya volcano.”
That’s an active volcano 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Managua. It emits huge amounts of sulphur dioxide.
‘Terrorism’
Rojas was arrested last July for having treated injured demonstrators and was sentenced to 18 years for “terrorism,” among a dozen alleged crimes.
“My only weapons (were) a flag, and a T-shirt with an opposition slogan,” Rojas said bitterly.
His testimony matches those of many other opposition supporters who suffered beatings, solitary confinement, threats, rape and other forms of mistreatment, according to a report compiled by the UN High Commission for Human Rights.
Like other released prisoners confined to house arrest, Rojas says he’s “not free.”