Mexico City, Feb 9 (AP) Some 222 inmates considered by many to be political prisoners of the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega were on their way to Washington on Thursday, a senior Biden administration official confirmed.

“The government of Nicaragua decided unilaterally to release 222 individuals whom they had imprisoned," said the official, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. "Some of these individuals have spent years in prison, many of them for exercising their fundamental freedoms, in awful conditions and with no access to due process.”

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Ortega has maintained that his imprisoned opponents and others were behind 2018 street protests that he claims were a plot to overthrow him. Tens of thousands have fled into exile since Nicaraguan security forces violently put down those anti-government protests in.

The US official said the United States facilitated the transportation of the freed individuals to the United States, where they will be paroled for humanitarian reasons into the country for a period of two years.

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The official said the US government considered the mass release a positive step by Nicaragua. The official said all of those who left Nicaragua did so voluntarily and are to receive medical and legal assistance upon arrival in the US.

The Nicaraguan government did not confirm the release.

Arturo McFields, Nicaragua's former ambassador to the Organisation of American States, celebrated the release, which he said the US State Department had confirmed to him.

“It is a massive freeing” of prisoners seldom seen, McFields said. He credited the prisoners' families for never letting up the pressure.

Family members of some of those released also confirmed that the prisoners were flying to Washington.

Berta Valle, the wife of opposition leader Felix Maradiaga, said the State Department told her that her husband was on the plane.

The Nicaraguan opposition's latest count on “political prisoners” held had been 245. It was not immediately clear who was not released.

Ortega upped his pursuit of political opponents in early 2021, looking to clear the field ahead of presidential elections in November of that year. Security forces arrested seven potential presidential contenders and Ortega romped to a fourth consecutive term in elections that the US and other countries termed a farce.

Nicaraguan judges sentenced several opposition leaders, including former high-level officials of the governing Sandinista movement and former presidential contenders, to prison terms for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.”

Given the notoriously bad conditions at the infamous El Chipote prison and others, as well as the age of some of the opposition leaders, relatives had feared the terms may effectively be death sentences.

Hugo Torres, a former Sandinista guerrilla leader who once led a raid that helped free then rebel Ortega from prison, died while awaiting trial. He was 73.

Nicaraguan judges also sentenced five Catholic priests to prison this week for conspiracy and spreading false information. It was not immediately known if any of them were among those released. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)