The former president of the DESA hydroelectric plant is sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison as 'co-author' of the murder of the activist Berta Cáceres

• Honduras Murder of activist Berta Cáceres: "Her legacy will never die"

After four postponements and almost a year after he was sentenced, the First Chamber of the Honduran National Sentencing Court has sentenced

to 22 years and six months in prison as 'co-author' of the murder of environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

It is two and a half years less than the highest sentence to which the former executive president of

could be sentenced , who will serve his sentence in the National Penitentiary, north of

.

This is the career electrical and military engineer who directed the Honduran company in charge of the

hydroelectric project against which Berta Cáceres fought.

Castillo has been detained and imprisoned preventively since March 2018, just two years after the Lenca environmentalist and indigenous leader was shot to death on March 2, 2016 in her house in La Esperanza Intibucá.

Castillo was already sentenced on July 5, 2021, although the sentence originally scheduled for August 3 of that year had yet to be read, although the Honduran Justice postponed this process up to four times, which ended this Monday in Tegucigalpa .

Thus, hundreds of people from the Lenca community demonstrated in front of the

to demand justice, called by the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), an organization that Berta Cáceres founded in 1995 and of which she was her coordinator until his death.

From now on, the defenses have 20 days to present an appeal, so the sentence could be ratified or even modified and ordered to repeat the trial, according to the spokeswoman for the Judiciary,

.

After the sentence was read,

, daughter of Berta Cáceres and coordinator of COPINH since 2017, assured that, from now on, "the most important moment of struggle is opening so that the intellectual criminals and those who ordered and paid for this crime are brought to justice".

In this sense, he criticized the fact that, for the last six years, the Honduran justice system "has been deceiving us by saying that there is an investigation and it is not true", for which, in his opinion, it only reflects that "there are untouchable people in this country because It is linked to economic and military power.

Thus, both the family of Berta Cáceres, as well as COPINH and the legal team that has handled the case, point to

as intellectual authors of the crime , owners of the hydroelectric company against which the environmentalist fought.

For this reason, one of Cáceres's lawyers,

, asked that the Atala family "also be brought to justice", because today's "small victory" "must be celebrated by fighting so that the victory is total".

INTELLECTUAL AUTHOR OF THE CRIME

According to the investigation, David Castillo was in charge of providing logistics and other resources to one of the perpetrators of the murder.

Thus, the First Chamber of the Sentencing Court with national jurisdiction indicated on the day of the sentence that the sentenced person had several telephone conversations to plan the crime, for which Castillo "contacted a friend of his who was an active member of the armed forces to make him participate in the actions aimed at ending the life of Berta Cáceres".

To achieve this goal,

was carried out on the environmentalist who won one of the Goldman environmental prizes for Latin America in 2015, considered the 'Green Nobel'.

The President of the Court stated on the day of the sentencing that it has been proven that the crime against Berta Cáceres "arises from people linked to the DESA company, as a result of the strong opposition" of the environmentalist to the 20-year concession of the Río Gualcarque, sacred to the Lenca community, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Honduras, of Mayan origin.

This project was approved by the Government of Honduras established after the 2009 coup against

.

Therefore, the Court has ruled that she was murdered for her "defense of environmental resources and the river", given that she had led massive protests and had filed up to 33 complaints with the Public Ministry and various human rights organizations.

In addition, it indicated that the Court is "fully convinced that the evidence produces certainty that Castillo has participated in the case as co-perpetrator of the crime of murder, carrying out actions aimed at harming the life of Berta Cáceres through other people," after see their millionaire project frustrated.

Despite the prison sentence, Berta Zúñiga has read a statement on behalf of COPINH in which she assures that it

, for which the State of Honduras "remains in debt".

In this way, he considered that there will only be "complete" justice when there is "capture, prosecution and conviction of the intellectual authors of the crime", taking into account that "the investigations of international experts have shown that there is an intellectual authorship in the murder composed of the brothers Jacobo, José Eduardo, Pedro and Daniel Atala".

However, he has criticized the fact that, to date, the Office of the

"has not made a single real advance in clarifying the intellectual authorship", for which he has denounced that once again, the Honduran justice system "fails to give justice to the victims and was not even able to issue the maximum sentence against one of his murderers", despite the fact that Berta Cáceres was declared on May 26 as a 'National Hero' in the Honduran Parliament.

EIGHTH PERSON SENTENCED

David Castillo is the eighth person who has been sentenced for the crime of the Honduran environmentalist, after, in December 2019, the National Jurisdiction Sentencing Court sentenced four men to 50 years in prison, while three others received a sentence of 30 years in prison.

Specifically, the hitmen

and retired soldier

were sentenced to 34 years in prison for the crime of murder against Cáceres and 16 more for attempted murder against a citizen of Mexican origin who was with her on the day of the events.

Likewise, the Court sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder of the retired Army lieutenant and former security chief of the DESA Company between 2013 and 2015,

, the biologist and former environmental manager of DESA,

, and Army Major

.

The seven people were captured between May 2016 and February 2017 in the framework of the "Jaguar" operation, while Roberto David Castillo was captured in March 2018 at the

when he was about to flee the country.

COPINH believes that Castillo was only "a link in the chain of command that ordered the murder."

For his part, the defense attorney for Cáceres, Víctor Fernández, recalled that David Castillo "could legally be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 25, so a sentence of 22 years and six months gives to understand that they consider it moderately dangerous".

"VICTORY OF THE LENCA PEOPLE"

Fernández recalled that, after the murder of Berta Cáceres, the declarations of the State of Honduras "were not aimed at generating justice, but rather impunity" by attributing the crime to a cause other than the defense of the territory.

For this reason, six years later, the lawyer considers that the fact that David Castillo has been sentenced reflects a "victory of the Lenca people, of COPINH and of the peoples of the world who have been attentive to building justice by breaking with impunity."

Thus, he pointed out that the person sentenced today "always came to the area of ​​the Lenca people as the lord and master who bought wills and subdued people, but in reality this process portrayed him as he is and as he always was, a businessman who

and who in practice ended up being a person linked to this crime".

For this reason, Fernández assured that the sentence should be celebrated as it is an "important step", although "it does not mean that everything ends here, since it is "inadmissible that with so many judicial and administrative resolutions that portray corruption and crimes, the Government maintains the

concession in force ". For this reason, he asked that it be revoked and that the river be free from this type of decision, while demanding that "national and international banks be brought to justice" by finance this project.

In this sense, Berta Zúñiga asked the people concentrated in front of the Supreme Court of Justice if "we are going to continue in this fight" to which they answered with a unanimous yes, while asking them "who is missing" and a crowd responded " the Atalas."

"Berta lives and the fight continues, Berta did not die, she multiplied," chanted the hundreds of COPINH supporters.

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