Nicaraguan businessmen assailed after escorting journalist

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Nicaraguan businessmen who oppose President Daniel Ortega say they were assailed with rubber bullets, stones and metal pipes by a crowd of government supporters.

The group of businessmen had escorted home a journalist who has been critical of Ortega. Journalist Aníbal Toruño returned to Nicaragua from exile in the U.S. a few days earlier. Toruño’s home was found spray painted early Saturday with phrases like “lead,” which is Nicaraguan slang for death.

José Adán Aguerri is president of the Supreme Council of Private Enterprise and he says on his Facebook page that police “stopped us while a mob of motorbikes arrived that began to attack with stones and bats.”

Hundreds of Nicaraguans have been killed, jailed or forced into exile since protests erupted in April 2018 demanding Ortega’s resignation.