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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Nicaragua's attorney general over human rights concerns, the latest US action against President Daniel Ortega and his increasingly authoritarian government.
Attorney General Wendy Morales Urbina led efforts to take property from 222 political prisoners who last year were put on a flight to the United States and stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality, the Treasury Department said.
Morales Urbina "has exploited her office to facilitate a coordinated campaign to suppress dissent by seizing property from government political opponents without a legal basis," senior Treasury Department official Brian Nelson said in a statement.
Under the order, the United States will block any property or interests she holds in the country and ban US transactions with her.
The State Department earlier put her on a corruption blacklist that makes her ineligible to travel to the United States.
The United States has already imposed sanction on Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is his wife.
A onetime Marxist firebrand who battled the United States during the Cold War, Ortega returned to power in 2007 and has gradually tightened his grip on state institutions.
More than 300 people died in 2018 in a crackdown on anti-government protests. Rights groups say that Nicaraguan authorities have since jailed hundreds of real or imagined opponents and shuttered thousands of religious or nongovernment organizations.
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Nicaragua's attorney general over human rights concerns, the latest US action against President Daniel Ortega and his increasingly authoritarian government.
