The head of a hydroelectric company in Honduras was found guilty on Monday of the assassination of environmental activist Berta Caceres in 2016, a staunch opponent of a project to dam the company in an indigenous region.
"Roberto David Castillo had a participation in this case as co-author of the crime of assassination to the detriment of Berta Isabel Caceres"
, announced the judge during a public hearing.
He is the eighth person convicted of this murder.
Read also: Honduras: murder of an environmental activist
The sentence of David Castillo, a former military graduate of the American Academy of West Point who became manager of the company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), will be pronounced on August 3.
David Castillo was arrested in March 2018 on suspicion of commissioning the murder of Berta Caceres, shot dead 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.
According to justice, the DESA company had ordered the death of Caceres because it denounced the construction of the dam. The construction site of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric power station, on the Gualcarque river, had been paralyzed by the demonstrations organized by the NGO Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). During the trial, the content of telephone communications between the person responsible and the seven other convicted of this murder was made public.
“We are happy today. Hondurans are fed up with so much impunity, ”
reacted Laura Zuñiga, daughter of Berta Caceres who now coordinates COPINH. But
"it still lacks the rung above,"
she added.
The ecologist's family and COPINH officials demand that justice also punish DESA partners, members of influential banking families in the country. On June 30, MEPs demanded in a letter to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez that justice be done for Berta Caceres.
"We appeal to the Honduran State to ensure (...) access to justice and adequate, effective and rapid reparation for the victims, both the family of Berta Caceres and the Honduran society in its together who was struck by this atrocious crime
,
”
they wrote.