Caribbean & Central America - January 2026

Seven magistrates in Nicaragua’s supreme court (CSJ) have resigned within a matter of weeks since 20 November. The departures are in line with a purge of the judiciary (which like all of the country’s institutions is controlled by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and First Lady Rosario Murillo) which began in October 2023 [SSR-24-02]. This in turn has been attributed to efforts by Murillo to appoint allies loyal to her at the CSJ as she positions herself in the line of succession to take over from her 80-year-old husband, who reportedly suffers from lupus and kidney failure.

The resignations began on 20 November, when two justices, Yadira Centeno and Ellen Lewin, quit citing health reasons. Five days later, three others tendered their resignations – Virgilio Guardián, Armengol Cuadra López, and José Manuel Martínez Sevilla – also purportedly for health reasons or for having reached retirement age. Then on 28 November a sixth justice, Armando Juárez, resigned citing old age while on 3 December, the seventh, Marvin Aguilar, the former acting head of the CSJ (2023-2025), tendered his resignation. The resignations were immediately accepted by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)-controlled unicameral 92-member legislature without question.

Reportedly, over 1,600 judicial officials have been dismissed since the start of the purge in what is seen as an attempt by Murillo to strengthen her position. This has been bolstered by the constitutional reform package which took effect last year, which promoted her from vice president to co-president and also reduced the judiciary and legislature to entities “coordinated” by the co-presidents [SSR-25-01]. Notably the reforms also reduced the size of the CSJ from 16 to 10 magistrates, presumably making it easier to control the court.

The Ortega-Murillo executive has acted swiftly in naming replacements which were rubber-stamped by the legislature. Five were sworn in on 27 November: Ana Julia Guido Ochoa, who was serving as the country’s attorney general; two appeals court magistrates Octavio Rothschuh and Ernesto Rodríguez Mejía; Shura Bonilyn Welcome Crawford, a district judge in Bluefields, the capital of the South Atlantic autonomous region (Raas); and José Manuel Fuertes Toledo  who Costa Rican-based Nicaraguan investigative outlet Confidencial reports is a member of the departmental electoral council in Boaco department and had served as the FSLN’s political secretary in Boaco up to June 2025. On 28 November and 4 December appeals court judge Rosa Argentina Solís Dávila and María Elsa Frixione Ocón, a prosecutor, were then sworn in, respectively.

According to a 2 December article published in Confidencial, the appointments represent the establishment of a new ‘Murillista’ CSJ that will directly answer to Murillo. Local jurists interviewed by Confidencial said the new court would continue to lack any independence to carry out its functions. One explained that things will remain as they are currently and there will only be a “change in face, Rosario Murillo is now going to centralise and decide on absolutely everything”.

Several of the new justices have previously been blacklisted by the US for human rights violations. Guido was sanctioned in 2020 for fabricating cases against political prisoners as well as being identified by the United Nations-appointed panel of human rights experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) in a report last year as being among 54 top officials responsible for alleged grave human rights violations, abuses, and other crimes in Nicaragua. Meanwhile Rothschuh, Rodríguez, and Solís were blacklisted by Washington in 2023 over decisions which stripped Ortega opponents of their citizenship [SSR-23-04].

Political prisoners

On 5 December the US Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs demanded the release of political prisoners detained in Nicaragua. In a post on social media, it stated that “This holiday season, too many Nicaraguans will look across their tables and see empty seats where loved ones should be, women and men unjustly detained or arbitrarily disappeared by the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship. Their pain and uncertainty are daily reminders of the regime's inhumanity. Release all Nicaraguan political prisoners now. The United States is watching.” According to data from local human rights observatory Mecanismo para el Reconocimiento de Personas Presas Políticas (MRPPP), as of 23 December at least 62 government critics were currently incarcerated within Nicaragua, with the MRPPP having recognised a total of 1,485 political prisoners since 2018, when the government began its brutal crackdown on dissent.