MEXICO CITY — Nicaragua’s government has revoked the law licenses of hundreds, possibly thousands, of attorneys in recent days, a move a United Nations expert on Friday characterized as a “purge of the legal profession” designed to dismantle the country’s remaining democratic safeguards.
The administration of co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has waged a relentless campaign against dissent since violently suppressing mass protests in 2018. Since then, authorities have imprisoned political opponents, clergy, and journalists, driving thousands into exile. The government has also stripped hundreds of citizens of their nationality and assets, while shuttering more than 5,000 organizations — predominantly religious groups, but also civic institutions such as Rotary clubs and scouting associations.
Attorneys discovered their credentials had been quietly erased from the Supreme Court of Justice’s official registry without explanation or formal notification, according to Reed Brody, an American human rights lawyer serving on a U.N. expert panel on Nicaragua, and several affected jurists. The Nicaraguan government did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
While the full scale remains unclear, Brody estimated the purge encompasses “at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers.” He described the action as the latest phase in a years-long pattern: “First, they closed the NGOs, the universities, the independent media… they’ve gone after the churches, and now it seems the legal profession. Anyone who might stand between the government and citizens.”
Brody confirmed at least 20 affected lawyers. Juan Diego Barberena, a human rights attorney exiled in Costa Rica since 2022, was among those stripped of accreditation; he identified at least 25 colleagues who suffered the same fate. On Thursday, Barberena found his name and license number entirely absent from the government’s database.
“This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession,” Barberena said. “The dictatorship can decide who gets to practice and who doesn’t.”
The tactic mirrors previous measures in which exiled Nicaraguans rendered stateless discovered their birth certificates and legal records had been purged from official databases. However, Barberena and Brody emphasized that this week’s action goes further: those removed from the rolls include not only government critics but also attorneys living abroad, practitioners of criminal and family law with no political involvement, and even some government loyalists.
Brody framed the purge as an effort to eliminate the last vestiges of independence within a judicial system already firmly controlled by Ortega and Murillo.
“On one hand, it’s an arbitrary measure to punish political dissent,” Barberena said. “On the other, it’s the dictatorship looking medium-term and wanting to prevent lawyers, experts, and academics from participating in the future of the country’s institutions.”
