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For twenty-one months, Nicaragua told the world nothing about Steadman Fagoth Müller. Nicaragua has ignored family pleas and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which, in October 2024, found that his life and personal integrity were at serious risk and ordered Managua to disclose his whereabouts and condition. It met the appeals of his daughter, a United States citizen, with silence. It met the inquiries of the United States and other international stakeholders with silence. On June 14, 2026, it appears that the silence was broken, but not honorably. Nicaraguan state media published a gallery of photographs, it says, taken on June 12 of Mr. Fagoth inside the National Penitentiary System, presented alongside a woman the state-owned media identifies as his wife and described as a routine weekly visit. These images are the first public sign in nearly two years, and they are an admission by the Nicaraguan state that it has held him in its custody all along.
Nicaragua cannot have it both ways. It cannot stage and publish photographs of a supposed weekly family visit while it continues to deny its own daughter in the U.S. and other family members the right to see him or to speak with him. Ms. Dina Carolina Fagoth, an American citizen, has not been permitted a single visit. Dina has not been permitted a single phone call. Dina has been refused entry to Nicaragua and obstructed at every turn while she searched for her father. The weekly family visits the regime advertises on its cameras are visits it denies to its actual family. To parade a frail, gravely ill 72-year-old man before a state television audience, while withholding him from his own family, is exploitation. These are images selected and released by his captors, on their timeline, through their television station. They are not proof of life in any sense recognized by international standards. Genuine proof of life requires independent verification and direct access by his counsel and his family. That has not happened, despite repeated requests. According to his family, Mr. Fagoth is gravely ill. He lives with insulin-dependent diabetes, heart disease, and the effects of prior strokes. He is 72 years old. The man in these photographs is visibly diminished. Every day he remains incommunicado is a day his life is at risk. We ask the Nicaraguan government to do one concrete thing now, beyond any photograph: grant Ms. Dina Carolina Fagoth’s standing request for a family visit, and permit her to see and speak with her father directly, and begin the process of freeing him. We further call on Nicaragua to heed the decision of the Inter-American Commission's binding precautionary measures, to disclose Mr. Fagoth’s location and legal status, to permit immediate and independent access for his family and counsel, and to release him. Finally, on behalf of the Fagoth family and the Miskito people who seek his release, we call on the United States and other stakeholders to demand the same, by name. America does not forget its friends. Steadman Fagoth Müller stood with the United States when the United States asked. His American daughter is asking now, and all she has asked is to see her father. Read more about this matter, on the GLA page, Miskito Nation. Comments are closed.
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