The trial against a businessman accused of being the moral perpetrator of the murder of emblematic Honduran environmentalist Berta Caceres, which occurred five years ago in the west of the country, opened on Tuesday April 6 in a local court .
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President of the electrical group Desarrollos Energeticos SA (DESA), David Castillo, a graduate of the American military school West Point, is appointed by the prosecution, by the Caceres family and by the NGO Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH ) as responsible for the crime.
"There is overwhelming evidence against David Castillo and he must be sentenced,"
Berta Zuniga, daughter of the environmentalist, told AFP at an indigenous religious ceremony held in front of the courthouse where the audience.
Castillo was arrested in March 2018 as the suspected mastermind of the murder of Berta Caceres, executed by bullets on the night of March 2-3, 2016, at his home in La Esperanza, 200 km from Tegucigalpa.
In December 2019, four men who entered the environmentalist's home and shot her were sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Three other men, who had hired them, were sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The court concluded that DESA had ordered Caceres' death for opposing the construction of a dam.
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The construction site for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric power station on the Gualcarque river was paralyzed by the demonstrations organized by COPINH, and DESA officials were convinced that the project could be completed once Berta Caceres was eliminated, according to the court.
"As president of DESA, David Castillo hired Douglas Bustillo, who hired the contract killers"
who committed the crime, added Berta Zuniga.
"There is evidence in the communications that Castillo hired Bustillo and he hired the hit men,"
he continued.
Berta Zuniga, who is the new COPINH coordinator, said DESA partners, including bankers, should also be prosecuted as the intellectual perpetrators of the murder.
