AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to Nicaragua, which has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council following a report last month that urged the international community to address human rights violations by President Daniel Ortega’s government. This is the commission’s chair, Jan-Michael Simon.

JAN-MICHAEL SIMON: [translated] Serious human rights violations have been and continue to be committed in Nicaragua, requiring urgent global action. Excellencies, since April 2018, President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo have implemented a repressive strategy to ensure absolute control of the state.

AMY GOODMAN: Today also marks 40 years since the release of the 1985 fact-finding report, Contra Terror in Nicaragua, which laid out how U.S. policy attempted to destabilize Nicaragua through a campaign of terror directed at its people by funding the Contras. President Ronald Reagan described the Contras at the time as, quote, “the moral equal of our Founding Fathers,” sending million’s of dollars in funding to the Contras. The testimony of the victims of Contra attacks in the 1985 fact-finding report made it to the front page of The New York Times and exposed the policy of torture, murder, rape, kidnapping and violence used by the Contras.

We’re joined now by the author of that report, veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, who quit his job at the New York state Attorney General’s Office at the time, spending months traveling through the war zones of Nicaragua collecting people’s stories. Reed Brody was recently appointed to the U.N. commission investigating contemporary abuses in Nicaragua, which presented their findings last week at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

REED BRODY: Nicaragua has become a place of surveillance and enforced silence for those who remain, while those who dare to resist, or who are merely suspected of doing so, face a life of statelessness and exile.

AMY GOODMAN: Reed, thanks so much for being with us today. Talk about your presentation last week at the U.N. Human Rights Council, just in the days before Nicaragua left the council.

REED BRODY: So, 40 years after my report on terror by the Contras, the anti-Sandinista Contras in Nicaragua, I was appointed to a U.N. commission looking at abuses in contemporary Nicaragua. And unfortunately, what we found is that the government of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo have, step by step, eliminated all checks and balances on their power. Today in Nicaragua, there are no independent voices. There is no independent press. All of the NGOs have had to leave the country. Four hundred and fifty-three Nicaraguans have had their citizenships taken away — former Sandinista commanders, the former vice president, human rights activists, former presidential candidates. Nicaragua has become a country of enforced silence and surveillance for those who stay in the country, and while those who dare to speak out face a life of exile and denationalization.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about how this happened. I want you to go back in time, especially for young people, to understand how momentous it was for the Sandinistas to take over. And you did this stunning report 40 years ago today —

REED BRODY: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: — about the violence of the Contras. Talk about what came next, the rise of Daniel Ortega, hailed as finally democracy in Nicaragua.

REED BRODY: Right. So, 40 years ago, I went to Nicaragua. Like many people of our generation, we were excited by the Sandinista revolution, which had overthrown decades of U.S.-backed family dictatorship under the Somozas. And I went to Nicaragua with a colleague from the Attorney General’s Office whose brother was a parish priest in a little village in Nicaragua. And in that village, I came face to face with people who were saying, you know, the Contras, this U.S.-backed — that the U.S. had armed and financed remnants of Somoza’s National Guard to fight again — to try to undermine the Sandinista revolution, which had begun literacy programs, healthcare for the poor, doctors in rural areas. But the U.S. was funding these Contras, who were destroying all of that. And in this little village, I came face to face with victims of those attacks, who said, “You have to go back and do something. You have to tell American people what’s going on here.”

And so, I came back to New York. I quit my job at the New York state Attorney General’s Office, and I returned to Nicaragua and spent five months crisscrossing the war zones of Nicaragua and taking hundreds of testimonies, and put those testimonies together in a report. And I came back to Washington just as Ronald Reagan was seeking assistance to the Contras and calling them “the moral equals of our Founding Fathers.” And my report detailed these widespread atrocities, rapes, murders, burning of schools and hospitals. And it concentrated enough minds in a divided Congress to deny assistance to the Contras. I was attacked by President Reagan as a Sandinista sympathizer. But my report was used by the Nicaraguan government also in its historic case against the United States that condemned, at the International Court of Justice, American assistance and American aggression against Nicaragua.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we only have three minutes, and you have exposed so much back then and also today. Particular part of the report that has been so important to so many was what happened in 2018. And talk about the co-presidents today.

REED BRODY: So, the Sandinistas lost the election in 1990. Daniel Ortega then started purging the Sandinista party, kept trying for running for president. Finally, in 2007, he became president again and began to dismantle all the checks and balances on society. His wife, Rosario Murillo, became co-president. Should be noted that Rosario’s daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, accused Daniel Ortega of having raped her repeatedly for many years. Rosario Murillo took her husband’s side against her daughter and at that point began to rise in power to become vice president.

And then, just two weeks ago, a new constitution was adopted in which she is — now you have a male president and a female co-president, a male co-president and female. And all the other powers of the state have become mere organs to be coordinated by the presidency. So, the last vestiges of checks and balances have been sacrificed at the altar of this, now a family. I mean, Daniel Ortega, the man who fought against a family dynasty, the Somozas, has now created a situation where he and his wife are co-presidents, and they can name their kids as vice presidents.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we have just one minute. What happened in 2018?

REED BRODY: So, in 2018, there was the protest first against the social security reform, and then it became a much wider protest. And the government of Ortega-Murillo decided to go at them with everything. And they brought out the police, paramilitaries and, as we have shown in our latest report, the military.

AMY GOODMAN: Which they denied at the time.

REED BRODY: Which they denied at the time. And our report now, based on insider testimony, shows that the military participated in this repression. And over 350 people were killed. And that was really the beginning of what we see until today in which, progressively, all of the voices in the country, unfortunately, have been silenced.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Reed. We will link to your report, presented at the — that you presented with the others at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Again, right before that report was presented, Nicaragua pulled out of the Human Rights Council. Veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody.

I’ll be moderating a panel at South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin this Saturday at 4 p.m., discussing the premiere of the HBO short documentary Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud, a film by Craig Renaud about his brother Brent, who was killed by a Russian sniper while reporting in Ukraine on March 13th, 2022. It is executive produced by DCTV’s Jon Alpert. For more information, you can see the SXSW website.

Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Anjali Kamat, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff. To see all information about activities, go to democracynow.org.