welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. nicaragua's veteran autocratic leader daniel ortega has been locking up political dissidents for years now. he has a new tactic — mass deportation and withdrawal of citizenship from those who dare to criticize him and his family. my guest today is felix maradiaga, who was recently

taken from his nicaraguan prison cell and flown to america. the good news is he's been reunited with his family after years apart. the bad news is ortega is trying to eliminate all opposition. so has resistance become impossible in nicaragua? felix maradiaga in miami. welcome to hardtalk. thank you, steve. and it's a pleasure to be back here. well, it is great to have you back on hardtalk, not least because you have just emerged from more than 600 days

in a nicaraguan prison. was it a surprise when you were told that you were to be released? the release was a surprise given we were under terrible, inhumane prison conditions. and one of the most complicated parts was the complete isolation. we were not allowed phone calls for 611 days. i had no access to lawyers. even our trial took place inside the prison. so we were not able to really know what's going on outside. is it true that you lost? i think nearly £60. that is, what, 20 or more kilos in the course of your imprisonment? indeed. by the way, i've gained £30 of that since november. and that brings me to my next point. by november, prison conditions changed substantially in comparison to the first phase to the first year of our imprisonment. and we had a sense that

something positive was going outside during the first time of our arrest. the first year we were in complete isolation. 0ur food was very bad. and not only that, but we were not allowed to have any contact with our family members for as long as a0 to 90 days. meetings with our relatives took place under police surveillance, but towards the end of last year, our families were allowed to bring food to many of us. and that was a small signal, a hopeful one, that something positive could happen outside. but at that time, as it was my case and the case of the other presidential candidates arrested and the other activists, we already had been condemned to many years in prison, in my case, 13 years sentence. this is a difficult question in a way, but i am very mindful that one political prisoner who was held in the same wave

of detentions as you, he did not survive. and i know the conditions you've described, you say were awful. i believe for a time you were actually held in complete darkness. i just wonder how close to the limits of your endurance, your ability to survive, did you come? it was a test of the human spirit in every sense. hugo torres was my friend. despite the fact that he and i had substantial ideological differences, he was truly a democratic person. he fought during the sandinista revolution. and during my years at the ministry of defense, we focused on reconciliation. and hugo torres died in mysterious ways almost in front of me when i was in solitary confinement during the first few months of my arrest. he was the only person i could actually see. and i saw a strong man,

little by little was becoming weaker and weaker. he asked for medical attention, which was always denied. so the death of hugo torres is only one more example of the police state and the inhumane situation in which 0rtega keeps most... nicaragua's entire nicaragua is under arrest. even nicaraguans who think that can work freely are deprived of their freedom. nicaragua has become a huge prison. well, you were, as you've already acknowledged, you were actually formally sentenced to 13 years for, quote, conspiracy to undermine national integrity. but the fact is, you were arrested and imprisoned when you had declared that you were going to run for the presidency of nicaragua back in 2021. do you think that was the reason that 0rtega wanted you out of action? i think it was the reason. in my case, i've devoted my entire life to promote human rights in nicaragua, first as a civil servant in charge of demobilisation and the reintegration of former

combatants, and later as an academic. but not only in my personal case, as someone who opposed 0rtega, those who opposed 0rtega from the platform ofjournalism, those who are student activists, human rights activists, everyone who wants to be outspoken against the 0rtega regime is persecuted and put into prison. you had a choice to make when they told you you could be released, because i believe they made it plain to you that release would involve immediate removalfrom nicaragua. you would be put on a plane and taken to the united states. now, as i understand it, some fellow prisoners of yours, other political prisoners, they chose not to do that deal. they refused and they are in prison to this day, including high profile prisoners like the catholic bishop, rolando alvarez. he wanted to stay. why did you decide that you were prepared to leave your home country?

well, it's the first time i want to share this publicly. i had made that promise to my wife. keep in mind that i already had an arrest warrant back in 2018. i went back to nicaragua. i was placed in house arrest prior to this particular arrest before. so i had promised to my wife that if i had faced this scenario, i was going to to do my best to be free and be with my family. i had not seen my daughter for three years at the time. and the decision of bishop alvarez, which i faced before, is extremely brave. bishop rolando alvarez is in prison because he was brave enough to stay back there and face 0rtega through his nonviolent resistance and through the force of his faith. but, i mean, it's easy for me to say this, sitting in a comfortable studio in london. but your decision, in a sense, do you feel that it in a way, represented a victory for 0rtega? he wanted you out of nicaragua. he's now stripped you of your citizenship, so you can't go back.

in a sense, by agreeing to the deal which everybody watching this and listening will understand, but by agreeing to it, you've given 0rtega what he wanted, if anything were a victory... it's very hard for him to justify in front of his supporters that we are criminals who fought against nicaraguan sovereignty, and suddenly we're placed in a plane and sent to the united states and received by, frankly, as heroes, not only by the nicaraguan community, but by the international community as well. and on top of that, given our voices back to continue explaining what the situation in nicaragua is, 0rtega has to work very hard to explain that decision. i think the dictators released political prisoners not because they want to, but because they don't have any other option. let's just talk about what it meant to you personally getting off that plane in washington. i believe that your wife and your daughter, who's obviously very young, i think she's nine years old,

they were able to be reunited very quickly with you when you got off the plane after more than 600 days in very difficult captivity. what was that like? it was the most magical experience in my life. it was very hard to go back. back in 2019, when i knew that i was going to face trial and that i was going to be persecuted. so i always played that painful image in my mind, the day that i went back to nicaragua back in 2019. and i knew that at some point i was going to be reunited with my daughter, with my wife, alejandra, with my mother. but i was not clear how many years ahead was going to be until i could hug them again and talk to them. it was magical.

and i knew that my wife had been a relentless advocate for my freedom, together with the wife of another political prisoner. so i knew that my wife was fighting very, very hard, traveling the world to put enough pressure for us to be released. it was very, very magical. you use a very interesting phrase — you said just a few days ago in your first flush of freedom, you said, "i have "been doing a heart audit, a heart audit to make sure "that we come out of this horrendous place with without "emotional scars that would hinder the work "that is still to be done." what do you mean by this audit of the heart? i think it is very personalfor me. my father was a political prisoner. he was tortured under the somoza dictatorship. later, during my years as as a young kid, i was a refugee in the united states for another situation, the civil war of nicaragua. and what i've noticed is that nicaragua has a cycle of violence. those who fight the dictatorship at the end, they become what they hate. so we need to break that cycle of violence. and the only way to do that is by not hating

those who persecute us, who put us into prison, and rather try to work out of reconciliation, out of solidarity of all nicaraguans. it's very, very hard because the natural human tendency when you go through so much suffering, is to basically hate those who put you in that situation, who made our family suffer. in my case, i made it very clear i hold no hatred for any nicaraguans. we want a democracy, even for sandinistas. we can have a country for all of us in tolerance and in peace. and that's my faith and that's my commitment to every nicaraguan. how can you not hate daniel 0rtega after this? i think that nobody can build anything productive out of hatred. i strongly disagree with him in many, many areas. and i think he's a war criminal. i think he's a dictator. but i think that personal,

direct hatred doesn't allow you to think in a very strategic way as a leader. and when you are trying to represent a broad coalition, when you're trying to represent a country, you cannot let your own personal resentments to get in the way of what is strategic. and in this case, the strategy means human rights. it means human dignity. a strategy means mobilizing international community for the reconstruction of a country that is completely kidnapped by the 0rtega family. right. well, we focused on your extraordinary personal story. let's get a little bit strategic in this interview. is there not a case for saying that 0rtega, by doing this mass release of 222 prisoners, including yourself, he is hoping to get something back from the united states who had been pressuring him to do just this, to release the prisoners. and antony blinken, secretary of state, said this in a statement after your freedom.

he said, "the release of these individuals by the government "of nicaragua marks, quote, a constructive step "towards addressing human rights abuses in the country. "it opens the door to further dialogue between "the us and nicaragua." that will be music to 0rtega's ears, won't it? well, absolutely. but i think that going back to being a strategic, he is not because he erased with one hand what he wrote with the other. i think that if he had not done things such as keeping bishop alvarez in prison and other 35 political prisoners, stripping us from our nationality and so on. i think that probably dialogue would be on the table from the perspective of the american governments and other governments. but i can be certain that we are not going to see any relaxation of international pressure precisely because 0rtega has proved that he is focused on building his dynasty and on keeping the police state. so 0rtega, if anything,

is radicalizing and that needs to be very clear. and yet if one looks at the international reaction to what 0rtega has done, as you say, with the stripping of the citizenship, notjust of the 222 prisoners released, but also another 90 activists who have since had their citizenship taken away from them. the latin american leaderships in countries like mexico, colombia, argentina, brazil have been very quiet, haven't they? have you noticed? i have noticed that, but i have a different perspective. i think that for the very first time in decades, and i can say that myself, as someone who testified in front of the un security council in geneva, at the human rights council as well, and travel latin america, five to seven years ago, it was very hard to mobilize certain people who had previous sympathies to the sandinista revolution. that is not the case any more. it's very clear that the 0rtega of today has nothing to do

with the sandinistas of the 19805 and is being abandoned, isolated even by former friends. i think that is very powerful that we have many of the progressive leaders of latin america speaking against him. i understand you. you want the world to see 0rtega in a particular way, mr maradiaga. and you've said, you know, he's part of a global ecosystem of dictatorships working very closely with russia, with china and dictatorial regimes such as cuba and venezuela. but isn't the truth that latin american leaders at the moment appear to have no appetite to put more pressure on nicaragua? and if one looks at the wider perspective of the biden administration, not only did blinken talk about the possibility of opening the door to dialogue with managua, but also the united states appears to be backing off direct confrontation with the maduro regime. in venezuela. there seems to be an air of pragmatism rather than confrontation

coming from washington. i would agree with you on that regard. we need much more international pressure and in the case of nicaragua it has been very hard. nicaragua doesn't have a petroleum ——— oil. we don't have geopolitical importance to the level of venezuela, for example. so i've been working very hard in explaining even before that in books, for example, that we published back in 2009, explaining 0rtega's dangerous relationship with iran, with russia, with china. and i think that little by little that is being taken into account, not at the speed that we wanted, but we hope that this is a new phase of international diplomacy against the 0rtega regime that would allow us to isolate completely that police state. but to be clear, when you talk about isolation, i always wonder how far you really think you want the international community to go? nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, second only to haiti. your people in nicaragua

are so poor and so desperate. hundreds of thousands of them every year are trying to escape the country, whether to costa rica or through guatemala and mexico, to try to reach the united states. are you proposing that in that context, you want to see tougher economic sanctions put on ortega and his regime? economic sanctions, targeted sanctions against the 0rtega inner circle because people in nicaragua is poor precisely because there's a corrupt regime. i understand. and i've also been very careful in not speaking about economic actions or sanctions that will hurt the poor. i think that that's very important to emphasize. but they do hurt the poor, mr maradiaga. look, we have to look at the reality. i mean, the united states last year, in response to what they saw as egregious abuses by the 0rtega regime, put new sanctions on the gold mining industry in nicaragua. but if you look at the nicaraguan economy, the gold mining sector is one of the few relative success

stories which actually employs thousands of nicaraguans. so, of course, those sorts of sanctions ultimately will hit your fellow citizens. i think that there are types of sanctions, and i personally disagree with your understanding of the gold industry, something that i've studied and researched. and i can tell you that that money goes into — most of that money goes into 0rtega's inner circle. but that will be a technical discussion on gold, which i don't mean to go into that. but indeed, there are many ways, which is very hard to explain in this public platform to tackle 0rtega's wallet, to tackle 0rtega's inner circle. and that's those are the things that we're working on. i hate to say it because it's

painful for you, but you're stateless right now. i mean, the nicaraguan parliament is going to rubber stamp 0rtega's demand that you be stripped of your citizenship and your passport. so ijust wonder how you go forward from here. you could walk away. you could probably claim asylum in the united states. frankly, you could make a new life for yourself. are you tempted to do that? well, i need time to heal. and that's what i meant when i said that. an audit of the heart. i need time for my family. i don't have and i don't claim to have the strategic answers for what's to come. but one thing i know — i will remain committed to to a new nicaragua and to a way in which all nicaraguans can have a humane and decent future. now, regarding my nationality, i think that the 0rtega regime doesn't have any authority, even though they reform the constitution and they stripped us from our nationality. but that is an illegitimate government. so that action, in terms of my understanding of it, doesn't have any implications. i am a nicaraguan and i will remain a nicaraguan today. and always. if you feel that strongly, then i guess you're very actively reflecting on how best to politically mobilize and organize to challenge

0rtega's grip on power. i see that in 2021, the opposition talked about finding a unity, a candidate who could challenge ortega and rally all of the opposition. but you failed. i mean, you, ithink, represented the blue and white party. there was a citizens alliance, there were a bunch of other political parties. you couldn't find a way to coalesce, to unite, to send a signal to the nicaraguan people that here is one candidate. all of you can get around to get rid of 0rtega. why did you fail? i respectfully disagree. if i remember that in february of 2021, the the main the five main candidates at that time signed an agreement to go into a primary elections. and we were about to go into the primary elections to select a single candidate. we were all put into prison. we had until august the second to reach a single candidate. and that was the reason why 0rtega put us all into prison. and you're right, in one point, we didn't move fast enough.

that's a political mistake. but we were on the right track to choose a unified political candidate. having said that, i think that we can work strongly and in a more candid way to pursue unified political opposition. and we're working very hard in not to commit the mistakes of the past. just before we end, i want to again get personal with you. and it's a reflection on your extraordinary personal story, because you first entered the united states as an unaccompanied minor, aged 12. you trekked across guatemala and mexico and got into texas and then ended up getting an education in florida as an immigrant. as i said earlier, hundreds of thousands of nicaraguans right now are trying to make a new life in costa rica or trying to get to the united states. for you with your special perspective as a political leader who actually was a child migrant, do you believe that nicaraguans who leave the country today are doing the right thing for themselves

and their families? i think they are, because no one can call a country their own if they cannot pursue their dreams, if they cannot be free, if they cannot pursue an education for their children, and they're doing it because they don't have any other options. however, i don't think that the world can solve our own problems. we nicaraguans have to focus on trying to build a new country, and there are some people that take great personal challenges. i'm only one of many, many examples. many other nicaraguans has gone through terrible things to face 0rtega. but those who do not have a chance, they only have exile as a chance. and that's why we need to care, because we can only solve this humanitarian crisis, not only a political one, but a humanitarian crisis by involving the international community in finding a solution. right. but interestingly, you're now sitting in the united states and you will be well aware that in the last few months,

the biden administration has made it harderfor nicaraguans who are seeking asylum to enter the united states. unless you do it online before you make an attempt to get on us soil, you will be immediately expelled when you get onto us territory. nicaraguans now find that a very difficult situation. would you be pressing the us government to backtrack, to end that system? i will continue to work together with my other colleagues of the nicaraguan opposition, not only to pursue changes inside nicaragua, but to find the best humanitarian ways to, with other friendly governments around the region to solve this humanitarian crisis. and yes, we have had conversations at the top level with the us government. in fact, we just landed a few weeks ago, and five or eight hours later we were having conversations with high officials of the white house and state department and congress. and this was at the top of our

list, trying to find ways to give a fast track to nicaraguan refugees. in a word or two — will you go back to nicaragua? do you believe? do you have faith you will and be politically active again? yes, as a man of faith, i believe that i will be back in nicaragua. i don't know if i will go back as a politician. i'm more comfortable in my skin as a human rights activist, as an academic. so i'm not prepared to say that i will be as a politician. but nicaragua is the country i love, and is a country where i will be someday soon. felix maradiaga, it's been a pleasure to have you on hardtalk. again, thank you very much. thank you, stephen.

hello again. the main difference in the weather we had on thursday from place to place was around how much cloud we saw. the best of the day sunshine was across wales, the midlands, east anglia and southern counties of england. really was a glorious day. but further north we had extensive cloud coming in off the north sea, the thickest cloud for eastern scotland and north east england. and that brought us notjust grey skies, but actually outbreaks of light rain on and off for much of the day. it turned out to be quite damp. now, over recent hours, we've been detecting some of this light rain still affecting parts of southern scotland, northeast england. but i think there's a tendency for the weather to become a bit drier here over the next few hours as that damp weather works its way westwards across northern ireland. elsewhere, a lot of cloud. and where we keep the cloudy skies overnight, temperatures frost free. the frost limited to the clearest spots, west wales, south west england and into the north west of scotland. now, as we start friday, there will be a lot of cloud around.

a damp start for northern ireland, for example. the cloud coming through across southeast england, very thin. it's only 300 metres thick, so it might thin and break to give some sunny spells. there's a lot of cloud set to come through across northern england. so if you see some sunshine here, it's going to be quite late in the afternoon. should see some breaks for western wales, parts of south west england and northwest scotland with some sunny spells from time to time. now through the weekend we'll start to get some thicker cloud coming in across the country. and with that, we're looking at some patches of light rain developing. here's the weather picture for saturday. it's an east—west split, eastern areas having the thickest cloud. you might get a few spots of rain falling from that particularly close to the north sea coast. but in western areas it's dry with the best of the cloud breaks and some sunny spells. temperatures not changing too much and we'll still have that fairly cool breeze with us. the second half of the weekend on sunday, the cloud certainly thickens up significantly and we'll start to see patchy outbreaks of rain developing quite widely across the country, but nothing particularly heavy. now into next week, we've got

a big change in the weather patterns on the way. northerly winds are set to dive southwards from the north pole, dragging with it much colder air, a return to widespread frost. and for some of us, the snow on the way as well. now, the first place to see potentially disruptive snow monday will be across northern scotland, where the snow, combined with strong winds, will bring drifting and pretty poor conditions over higher routes through the rest of the week. the risk of snow extends southwards.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore. i'm mariko 0i. the headlines — guilty verdict. signed by the fall lady. —— forelady. disgraced lawyer alex murdaugh is convicted of murdering his wife and son at a trial in south carolina. a meeting of g20 foreign ministers in delhi ends in acrimony because of bitter divisions over russia's war against ukraine. every g20 member and virtually every country period continues to bear the cost of russia's war of aggression. a war that president putin could end tomorrow if he chose to do so.