MEXICO CITY — Nicaragua’s ruling government has quietly revoked the practicing licenses of a large number of lawyers in recent days, with a United Nations expert calling it a deliberate “purge of the legal profession” designed to eliminate what little remains of independent oversight in the country.
The nation is governed by husband-and-wife co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who have been systematically crushing opposition since widespread social protests erupted in 2018 — protests the government responded to with violent force.
In the years since, the government has jailed political opponents, religious figures, and journalists, driving thousands out of the country. Hundreds have been stripped of their Nicaraguan citizenship and property. More than 5,000 organizations have been shut down since 2018, including religious groups, local rotary clubs, and scouting organizations.
In recent days, lawyers began noticing their licenses had simply vanished from the Supreme Court of Justice’s official registry — with no warning or explanation given. Reed Brody, an American human rights attorney serving on a U.N. panel of experts focused on Nicaragua, confirmed the removals, as did several lawyers who had their own credentials wiped from the system.
Nicaragua’s government offered no official statement and did not respond when the Associated Press reached out for comment.
Brody said the full extent of the purge was still unclear, but estimated it “would certainly appear to be at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers.”
“This follows the pattern that we’ve been seeing for years. First, they closed the NGOs, the universities, the independent media, you know, they’ve gone after the churches, and now it seems the legal profession,” Brody said. “Anyone who might stand between the government and citizens.”
Brody said he was personally aware of at least 20 lawyers who had been affected.
Juan Diego Barberena, a lawyer and human rights defender who has been living in exile in Costa Rica since 2022, was among those whose credentials were erased. He said he knew of at least 25 other colleagues in the same situation.
On Thursday, Barberena attempted to look up his legal accreditation in the government’s online database and found that both his name and license number had been completely removed.
“This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession,” Barberena said. “This means that the dictatorship can decide who gets to practice and who doesn’t.”
The tactic mirrors actions the government has taken against exiles who were stripped of their citizenship. Many have reported finding that their birth certificates and other official documents had been erased from government databases as if they never existed.
However, Barberena and Brody noted that this latest round of erasures went further than targeting known dissidents. Some of those affected were simply Nicaraguans living outside the country. Others practiced areas like criminal or family law with no political connection whatsoever. A number were even known supporters of the government, Barberena said.
Brody characterized the move as an effort to strip away the last traces of independence from a judicial system that Ortega and Murillo already effectively control.
“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.”
