Eight years after the assassination of Berta Cáceres –feminist and defender of the territory and rights of the Lenca people– the guilty verdicts against the perpetrators and co-author of the crime are not yet final, and the process of justice is under attack.
Recently, Juan Carlos Sánchez Cantillano and Ritza Antúnez, the attorneys of David Castillo, were found guilty as co-authors of the assassination of Berta Cáceres by the Trial Court on July 5, 2021, have developed a campaign of false statements in order to negatively affect the process of justice for Berta Cáceres and the confirmation of the sentences of those responsible for her death.
This attack aims to criminalize the expert witness of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and hamper the duty of the Court’s Judicial Chamber of Criminal Cases to ratify the guilty verdict against David Castillo and other assassins of Berta Cáceres.
The purpose of the statements made by the defence attorneys of David Castillo is to create doubt and confusion. Nevertheless, they have been invalidated in communications of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and the organizations that accompany them. And they have also been dismissed in the sentencing trial that convicted Castillo.
These organizations point out that the very communications of the persons found guilty are the fundamental proof that corroborates their criminal liability. Furthermore, the cell phone extractions of the accused implemented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, coincide with those of the expert witness in Castillo’s defence, Sean Bodde. The information extracted from telephone devices proves that David Castillo participated in the planning, coordination, implementation, and payment of the assassination of Berta Cáceres.
It is important to note that the alleged complaint was presented before the Public Prosecutor’s Office one week after the designation of Juan Carlos Sánchez Villalobos as Director of Attorneys of the Office. Sánchez Villalobos is well known for defending accused parties in emblematic cases of corruption. He participated, for example, in the defense of Carolina Castillo in the “Fraude against the Gualcarque” trial, a case that proved that corruption in granting non-consulted licenses for the exploitation of the sacred Gualcarque River led to violations of the rights of the indigenous Lenca people in the administrative districts of Intibucá and Santa Barbara. David Castillo awaits sentencing in this case.
This information is relevant because it reveals influence trafficking that allows this terrible assassination to go unpunished and because the crime against Berta Cáceres is related to the “Fraude against the Gualcarque.”
Meanwhile, certain actions of Sergio Ramón Ramírez Orellana, also convicted for the assassination of Berta Cáceres, are aimed at manipulating the work of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. All of these actions seek to negatively affect the results provided by the penal system in this case in response to the demand for justice from the family, COPINH, and the struggle against impunity and for the preservation of the State of Law.
The undersigned organizations condemn the manoeuvres that jeopardize the process and the personas involved in it. In the same vein, we demand that the Supreme Court of Justice presided over by the magistrates Walter Raúl Miranda Sabio, Mario Rolando Díaz and Nelson Danilo Mairena Franco, immediately confirm the ruling handed down against the seven men responsible for perpetrating the assassination of Berta Cáceres and also confirm the sentence against David Castillo, as co-author of this crime.
Women defenders sustain life in their communities. Thus, every action against them by enforcers of an extractive, capitalist, and predatory model of development means an attack against the community as a whole that is deeply patriarchal and consequently attacks women in specific and distinctive ways.
We join COPINH in calling for the national and international community to remain alert and vigilant over the functioning of the system of justice in Honduras in order to guarantee effective access for the Lenca people to truth, justice, reparations, and non-repetitive measures.
We support and join this statement. Read more about Berta Cáceres:
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