United Nations experts on Nicaragua, working to sanitize the effects of a failed, U.S.-inspired coup attempt, have not visited the country since the violence occurred eight years ago.

By John Perry

Yet, for them, Nicaragua isa giant prisonin which the Sandinista government has effectively taken its own population hostage.

According to lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, the German leader of the group who is not known to have ever visited Nicaragua, its government is doingexactly what the Nazi regime did.

Simons group of experts, which includes lawyers from Hungary and Uruguay, have nowpublisheda dozen UN-funded reports on Nicaragua, each with more exaggerated allegations than its predecessor.

Two aspects of its work reveal its function as part of the U.S. propaganda machine. One is that the groupignores detailed evidencepresented to it that does not comply with Washingtons narrative on Nicaragua; in fact, itaccepts evidenceonly from so-called human rights groups opposed to the Sandinista government.

The second is that it feeds its material to Nicaraguas opposition media, to which Simon readily gives interviews. Their role is to give rolling coverage to the reports andif possibleattract the attention of corporate media, such as TheNew York Times.

But these human rights groups and opposition media are far from independent. They all receive considerable U.S. funding.

Givingevidencein February to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Damon Wilson, said that funding such partners who oppose the Nicaraguan government was the NEDs third largest program in the hemisphere after Venezuela and Cuba. The NED is aCIA cutoutthat uses federal funding to promote U.S. interests globally, especially when this involves inciting regime change.

Wilson was reluctant to name the extraordinarily courageous folks from Nicaragua he met in a recent visit to Costa Rica. But he did refer to one NED partner by name, the so-called Rural Workers Movement. Was he aware that this group organized fatal attacks on police stations in rural Nicaragua in 2018 (documented in detailedwitness statements)? Did he know that its attacks resulted in multiple deaths and injuries, kidnappings and firearm thefts, and terrorized local populations? Apparently not, because Wilson said that the NED supports groups that understand the importance of non-violent, peaceful resistance.

In all, the coup attempt in 2018 resulted in hundreds of deaths, including 22 police officers. At the time, the UN Human Rights Commission brieflyacknowledgedthe oppositions role in the violence, but it and other international bodies quickly shifted their focus to concentrate solely on alleged violence by the state.

The role of the current UN group of experts is to firmly establish the narrative that the Sandinista government is to blame, without exception, for the hundreds of deaths and injuries that resulted from the coup attempt.

In their latest report, the experts take this one step further: They make the bizarre claim that hundreds of violent opposition attacks were, in reality, false-flag incidents. Acts of vandalism against FSLN [Sandinista] militants properties and private businesses, such as stoning, looting and arson, they allege, were actually carried out by pro-government armed groups paid for from state funds.

This would be laughable had these incidents not been extremely serious, that in many cases surviving victims were able to identify their attackers, and that the coup leaders and their followers openly bragged about the attacks and posted videos of them (mostly since deleted) on social media.

A photo of armed opposition roadblock in 2018, posted on social media. [Source: afgj.org]

Nicaraguans assaulted by opposition thugs or whose houses were burned down (many known to me personally)would be appalled that the UN has published such obvious lies.

The new report also claims that public funds were diverted from social projects in order to suppress the 2018 violence, as if this is an act of malfeasance on the governments part. Yet, of course, three months of violent attacks on police, government workers and public buildings, including setting fire to schools and health centers, carried an enormous cost.

The government asked for, and were refused, an IMF loan to help pay for losses ofmore than $1 billion. They were told that, if they applied formally, the request would bevetoedby the U.S. government.

Naturally, once the coup attempt ended, the Sandinista government sought to ensure that any new acts of terrorism, whether instigated inside Nicaragua or abroad, are identified and, if possible, halted. Such a response would be expected in any civilized country. However, for the expert group, this has morphed into a transnational surveillance and intelligence network which carries out assassinations abroad.

Their argument centers on the case of Roberto Samcam, who led one of the most violent opposition groups in 2018 and fled to Costa Rica to avoid arrest. He was murdered in June 2025 but, despiteextensive effortsby opposition groups to blame the Sandinista government for his killing, the authorities have since arrested five Costa Ricans.

In February, the Costa Rican authoritiesannouncedthat all individuals linked to Samcams murder have been apprehended; none was Nicaraguan nor apparently linked to Nicaragua. There were implications, however, that the homicide was drug-related.

Of course, since the day of the killing, opponents of Nicaraguas government have been claiming that it ordered the assassination. Speaking to opposition outlet Confidencial, Jan-Michael Simon simplyannouncedthat this was the case, despite having no proof. So did Damon Wilson in his February testimony to a sub-committee of the House Committee on Appropriations.

A final example of the extreme partiality of these experts is their take on Nicaraguans who have left the country. They quote figures showing that more than 300,000 Nicaraguans have sought asylum in Costa Rica. But they fail to note that Costa Rican authorities regularly claim that most of these applications are from Nicaraguans who simply want to regularize their status in the country: only one in ten has so far been approved.

The experts also ignore the extreme fluidity of traffic across the border, with around 900 Nicaraguans crossing daily in both directions, according toanother UN body. If they are escaping the surveillance, threats, harassment and physical violence they allegedly experience in Costa Rica at the hands of Nicaraguas undercover officials, it seems extraordinary that so many return to the giant prison created by the Sandinista government.

The narrative of Sandinista repression (a characterization used 42 times in a 26-page report) suits Washingtons tightening of the screws on Nicaragua. The experts call for additional targeted sanctions, disregarding theirillegitimacy in international lawand that the UN itself rejects their unilateral imposition.

Former UN independent adviser Alfred de Zayas observed thatthe human rights industryis in dire condition. As the group of experts continues to demonstrate, the main purpose of the industry ismanufacturing consentfor regime change. Its agenda is Washingtonsnot one that resonates with most Nicaraguans, who simply want the stability recovered after the 2018 coup attempt to be maintained.

A poll in Februaryshowedthatacross the whole of Latin Americatheir country has the third most popular government. It gives the lie to the monstrous portrayal of Nicaragua offered by the UNs so-called experts.

Original post:Covert Action Magazine.

John Perrylives in Masaya, Nicaragua, where, perplexingly, he writes and edits books on British housing and social policy.

Pressenza New York