US corporate media portrays violent Nicaraguan coup plotter as ‘political prisoner’– thegrayzone.com

US media and the human rights industry are portraying Jeffrey Jarquin as a heroic freedom fighter tortured and wrongly imprisoned by Nicaragua’s government. It turns out he was an opposition hooligan who destroyed a public university during the violent US-backed 2018 coup attempt.

On 1 October 2026, Jeffrey Isaac Jarquin, a 35-year-old Nicaraguan man, was deported from the United States by ICE and, on arrival in Managua, was immediately sent to prison by Nicaraguan authorities. Reports described him as a “torture victim,” a “political prisoner,” and a “prominent figure in the anti-government protests” that occurred in Nicaragua in 2018. His story was covered in uncritical fashion by the Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, The LA Times and other outlets. It featured on Democracy Now and he received support from the longtime former head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth.

Not one of the reports, however, investigated Jarquin’s role in those “protests” nor recorded that in November 2018, he was found guilty of various acts of terrorism and sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.

“Tortured” or “torturer”?

Who is Jeffrey Isaac Jarquin, the man being championed by corporate media as a heroic freedom fighter tortured by an authoritarian regime?

In April 2018, protests began in Nicaragua which were part of a U.S.-led and funded coup attempt. Since the protests were ostensibly “student-led,” several universities in Managua were occupied and used as command centers by paid criminals whose financing originated from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.