Spain on Friday said it would offer citizenship to more than 200 political prisoners released by Nicaragua and deported to the US.
Nearly all the 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners are prominent government critics jailed in President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on dissent over recent years.
The prisoners, among them Nicaraguan opposition figures and regime critics, were freed by Managua on Thursday and expelled to the US, with the parliament voting to strip them of their nationality.
The prisoners freed include five former presidential hopefuls who sought to challenge the increasingly authoritarian Mr Ortega in a 2021 election only to be jailed in an unprecedented dragnet and criminalising of political dissent in the Central American country.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish news agency Servimedia that the former prisoners would be offered refuge.
