US sanctions Nicaragua’s attorney general over human rights concerns

Washington says Morales Urbina ‘exploited her office to facilitate a coordinated campaign to suppress dissent’.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Nicaragua’s attorney general for what it says is her role in the government’s “unjust persecution of political prisoners and civil society”.

Wendy Carolina Morales Urbina, who has been the attorney general since 2019, “has exploited her office to facilitate a coordinated campaign to suppress dissent by seizing property from government political opponents without a legal basis”, Brian Nelson, the US Department of the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement on Thursday.

Morales Urbina led efforts to take property from 222 political prisoners who were put on a flight to the US in 2023 and stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality, the Treasury Department said.

Under the order, the US will block any property or interests she holds in the country and ban US transactions with her.

The attorney general supported the “ruthless oppression of peaceful opposition members in Nicaragua by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo,” US Department of State spokesperson Mathew Miller said.