Eddy Montes, a protestor shot dead in a Nicaragua prison this week, was a naturalized US citizen who served in the Navy, but ultimately returned to the Central American country where he fought for a change in government, his family said.
Montes died on Thursday after he and other prisoners tried to snatch a gun from a guard while the International Red Cross was visiting the prison, the Nicaraguan interior ministry said, adding that the guard acted in self-defense.
He had been jailed after protesting against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in October last year, during protests that have killed at least 300 people. The protests erupted over welfare benefits but spiraled into a broader movement to oust Ortega, who is serving his third term as president.
Angered by Montes’ death, opposition groups said on Friday that they would stage new protests over the weekend.
The US State Department condemned his death as a killing at the hands of Nicaraguan riot police and urged the government to thoroughly investigate the incident. It also called for other political prisoners to be released.
“The lack of justice for these prisoners and for the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by Ortega’s security and parapolice forces shows the regime’s utter disregard for human life and democratic freedoms,” it said in a statement.
The Nicaraguan government prohibited the demonstrations in November last year and have accused the protesters of intending to cause chaos.
Montes had spent much of his childhood and young adult years in the United States, family members say, but returned to Nicaragua in the early 1980s to study medicine. Ortega and his leftist Sandinista party had came to power a year earlier.