‘This is huge’: Nicaragua frees 222 political prisoners and flies them to US

Daughter of former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa says he is among detainees released, adding: ‘Everybody is on the plane’

More than 200 prisoners jailed by Nicaragua’s authoritarian regime during a ferocious two-year political crackdown have reportedly been freed and flown to the United States.

“This is huge,” Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa, the daughter of one of the prisoners – the elderly former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa – told the Guardian on Thursday morning as she digested the shock news of her father’s release.