Nicaragua Moving to Free All Its Political Prisoners

President Daniel Ortega announced Monday that he will ask the National Assembly to pardon all Nicaraguan political prisoners before the Feb. 25 national elections, a move that will free an estimated 1,156 inmates in the next four weeks.

The Sandinista leader, who is seeking reelection, called the decision a gesture of reconciliation in response to appeals by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. If carried out, it would mark the first time in more than a decade of civil strife that Nicaraguan prisons have been empty of all enemies of the government in power.

Vilma Nunez de Escorcia, president of the government human rights agency, said pardon requests are being drafted for about 1,117 prisoners accused of counterrevolutionary activity--the number held as of Dec. 31--as well as 39 members of the National Guard, which was defeated and disbanded by the Sandinista guerrillas in July, 1979.

“When the elections take place on Feb. 25, these people will no longer be in jail but will be among their families, joining in the process of peace, the process of reconciliation in Nicaragua,” Ortega said.

He made the announcement after an 80-minute meeting with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Roman Catholic archbishop. The cleric has mediated two years of failed efforts to end the war between the Sandinistas and the U.S.-backed Contras. Ortega credited the cardinal with accelerating his decision.

Recalling a previous meeting, Ortega said: “I had told Cardinal Obando that I was thinking of freeing the Contras after the elections, and he asked me, ‘Why not now?’ He was always proposing, ‘Do it now, right away, why wait?’ ”

The president also announced that he has granted the cardinal’s request to let Catholic priests visit military bases and prisons to say Mass. Such access has been sharply limited during a decade of tension between the leftist Sandinistas and the Catholic hierarchy.

Obando hailed both decisions as “positive steps” that will “create a climate of peace and concord” among Nicaraguans.

Nicaragua was torn by more than a year of urban warfare that capped the Sandinista insurrection against President Anastasio Somoza, then was plunged into the war with the Contras in early 1982. When peace talks with the rebels began in late 1987, the Sandinistas acknowledged holding more than 3,500 Contras, rebel supporters and former National Guardsmen.

As a result of the peace talks, the government freed 1,894 former guardsmen last March and has been releasing other anti-Sandinista prisoners in small batches.

As the number of prisoners dwindled, the exact number remaining behind bars became a subject of controversy. The Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, an anti-Sandinista group, insisted last summer that the Sandinistas were holding about 6,000 prisoners.

Americas Watch, a New York-based rights agency often critical of the Sandinistas, made a thorough survey of the 15 prisons last September and corroborated an International Red Cross survey that found 1,306 prisoners, a figure close to the government count at the time.

Until now, Ortega had insisted on keeping “known leaders” of the Contras and former guardsmen and a small number who were “directly involved in serious crimes” behind bars until the Contras freed 1,845 Nicaraguans listed by the government as having been abducted by the rebels.

When asked about that demand Monday, the Sandinista leader said he will keep appealing to the Contras through Obando “because the mothers of the kidnaped ones suffer as much as the mothers of the prisoners.”

Obando said he will ask the Contras “if they have any (prisoners) in their power . . . to free them.” The Contras have insisted they hold no prisoners.

Heavy fighting has been stilled by peace talks and truces for much of the last two years. However, the fate of prisoners in Sandinista jails and captives in Contra camps has become an emotionally charged issue in the presidential race between Ortega and his chief rival, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

Chamorro, the matriarch of a politically divided family, has portrayed Ortega as a dictator and herself as the candidate of national healing. In a campaign speech Saturday, she promised a general amnesty if elected.

“The Sandinistas might criticize me, but the jails are going to open,” she declared.

Although welcoming the president’s decision, leaders of Chamorro’s National Opposition Union noted that Ortega committed his government to a general amnesty when he signed a five-nation Central American peace accord in August, 1987. They charged that the timing of his latest announcement is politically motivated.

“We continue to insist that justice delayed is justice denied,” said Luis Sanchez Sancho, a spokesman for the 14-party coalition. “These prisoners were held hostage in peace negotiations, and now they are being used to obtain electoral dividends. But this is no reason not to celebrate their freedom.”

Although the National Assembly is controlled by the Sandinistas, it has in the past yielded to pressure by militant Sandinista groups, such as the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs, to reject some pardons sought by the government.

However, a spokeswoman for that group, Zulema Baltodano, said Monday night: “This is a decision of our president, and we support it. We are not going to block his steps in favor of peace.”

It was not clear whether the prisoners to be freed next month will be allowed to register to vote because voter registration ended in October. Ortega ducked a question about that Monday, saying that only the Supreme Electoral Council, a five-member body supervising the election, could decide.