Spain on Friday said it would offer citizenship to more than 200 political prisoners released by Nicaragua and deported to the US.
Nearly all the 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners are prominent government critics jailed in President Daniel Ortega's crackdown on dissent over recent years.
The prisoners, among them Nicaraguan opposition figures and regime critics, were freed by Managua on Thursday and expelled to the US, with the parliament voting to strip them of their nationality.
Mr Ortega described the surprise release as a push to expel criminal provocateurs who sought to undermine Nicaragua, while the US hailed it as a “constructive step” towards improving human rights.
The prisoners freed include five former presidential hopefuls who sought to challenge the increasingly authoritarian Mr Ortega in a 2021 election only to be jailed in an unprecedented dragnet and criminalising of political dissent in the Central American country.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish news agency Servimedia that the former prisoners would be offered refuge.
“The government is offering Spanish nationality to these 222 freed prisoners given the news that the process to declare them stateless has been started,” he said.
Over the years many dissidents from countries in Latin America have found refuge in Madrid, with Spain offering Spanish nationality to some of them.
Flanked by top security officials and sitting in front of national and ruling party flags, Mr Ortega in his televised remarks said that all the prisoners sought to undermine national sovereignty, describing them as “agents” of foreign powers.
“Let them have their mercenaries,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, an Ortega loyalist judge denounced the released prisoners as “traitors” who he said had been deported.
Hours later, at Dulles International Airport near Washington, crowds of people waited to greet loved ones, waving flags and chanting “Free!”
In 2021, Washington imposed sanctions and condemned Mr Ortega's re-election as a sham, after all of his top opponents were rounded up and detained by police in the months leading up to the vote, with journalists and religious figures also later imprisoned.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the release as “a constructive step towards addressing human rights abuses” that could also lead to further dialogue between the countries.
Those freed would be allowed to enter the US on emergency humanitarian grounds, the administration of President Joe Biden said in a note to Congress.
