Carlos Cardenas Zepeda was arrested a second time on August 19, 2025, at his Managua home. Police detained him for political reasons tied to his role as legal advisor to the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference. His family experienced 12 days of uncertainty before officials summoned them on August 30 to identify his body. Less than a week earlier, Mauricio Alonso Petri’s family was informed that his body lay in the morgue after 38 days of enforced disappearance. Since July, security forces loyal to Ortega and Murillo have used short- and long-term forced disappearances against opponents. The Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners recorded at least 33 arrests, including five entire families and a 12-year-old girl among those affected.
Police officers from the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo detained him on both occasions for political reasons, specifically for being the legal advisor to the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference, a collegiate body made up of several Catholic bishops hated by the co-presidential couple. His family did not know where he had been taken, and they were in a state of anxiety for 12 days, until Saturday, August 30, when they received a fateful call:
They received a call from the Institute of Forensic Medicine informing them that, after 38 days of enforced disappearance, the 64-year-old's body lay in the morgue, ready for immediate identification and burial, surrounded by a police contingent armed with assault rifles.
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