Victor Hugo Tinoco

Victor Hugo Tinoco Fonseca (born June 10, 1952) is a Nicaraguan politician and former Sandinista guerilla. He was Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs with the Sandinista National Liberation Front, ambassador to the United Nations and a deputy in the National Assembly. In the late 1990s he grew critical of Daniel Ortega and was expelled from the party in 2005, joining the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) instead and later its successor, the (Unamos) party. In June 2021, he was part of a wave of arrests of opposition figures, including seven aspiring opposition candidates for president in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election.

Biography Victor Hugo Tinoco was born on June 10, 1952, in León. He then moved to León where he worked in the Revolutionary Student Front (FER).

He also has a postgraduate degree in advanced business management from the Central American University (UCA).

Following the fall of the Somoza dictatorship, Tinoco was appointed ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1979 to 1981.

He was also a member of the FSLN National Directorate and twice served as a National Assembly deputy, first for the FSLN (from 1997 to 2001)

He grew critical of Daniel Ortega, particularly seeing Ortega's 1998 pact with Arnoldo Alemán as a turning point toward authoritarianism. he mounted an ultimately unsuccessful challenge to Ortega in 2001 in the FSLN internal primary elections for president.

In June 2021 Tinoco was part of a wave of arrests of opposition candidates for president in the November 2021 elections and other opposition figures. He was arrested on June 13, 2021, the same day as other Unamos leaders including Suyén Barahona, Ana Margarita Vijil and Tinoco's former Sandinista comrade, commander Dora María Téllez, who is famous for her role in a 1978 raid that freed 60 Sandinista political prisoners. Like most of those arrested, Tinoco is accused of violations of controversial Law 1055, passed by the FSLN-controlled legislature in December 2020, which gives the government unilateral power to arrest anyone it designates as a "traitor to the homeland". His family has expressed concern about his health, given his preexisting hypertension, asthma, and Ménière's disease.

Tinoco was convicted and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on 21 February 2022.