Background on this political wrongful conviction case here and here:
Press release from Eric Volz of the David House Agency:
Please find here a petition to the United Nation Special Rapporteur on Torture c/o Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at Geneva. The petition, filed this morning regarding the case of my client Jason Puracal, an American citizen wrongly detained in Nicaragua, details the the ways in which he was tortured in police custody and continues to be subject to inhumane treatment by the prison guards. Anna Tolin’s (Northwest IP) early work on this case helped to lay the ground work for this petition. This filing is very serious and the UN will be forced to quickly respond and publicly weigh in.
Jason has been denied edible food and potable water for the last 17 months and is slowly being starved to death. He has some 30 pounds off his original weight of 180 pounds.
Wrongful Convictions Blog 
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Supposing you succeed in convincing the United Nations to contact Nicaragua over Puracal’s mistreatment, what practical outcome could that possibly yield? Can you provide examples of UN human rights actions that lead to a hostage being freed? Or prison conditions being improved anywhere? It is a dramatic gesture, but I’m skeptical of it’s practical usefulness.
Wouldn’t it be more practical to file a DRCAFTA grievance on Puracal’s behalf? Clearly, Puracal was a foreign investor in Nicaragua. DRCAFTA specifically provides for a dispute resolution process with response time requirements that are vastly superior to Nicaragua’s criminal justice system. Jason Puracal is an aggrieved investor and would seem to have a right to a “consultation and negotiation” resolution process. If those talks fail, he could enter into an arbitration process. The first concession you could seek would be to have him placed on house arrest until his case can be settled. Would a victory on this front lead to his release from prison and his return to the USA? I don’t know. There appears to be no precedent for use of DRCAFTA for this purpose. But it is very clear that the purpose DRCAFTA serves is to normalize the rule of law so that commerce can occur unencumbered. Remax in particular would seem to be damaged by the miscarriage of justice imposed on Puracal.