Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Félix Maradiaga knew Daniel Ortega would never allow a free and fair election in Nicaragua. He ran anyway.

In 2021, the former presidential candidate challenged Ortega’s dictatorship to expose the regime’s sham election to the world. Instead, he was arrested, tortured, imprisoned for 611 days, and ultimately stripped of his citizenship.

In this episode of The Dissident’s Mic, Casey Michel, Director of HRF’s Combating Kleptocracy Program, sits down with Nicaraguan political activist Félix Maradiaga to discuss his time as a political prisoner, why authoritarian regimes are increasingly working together to suppress dissent, and what gives him hope that democracy can still prevail.

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