TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - An inmate involved in the trial of the brother of Honduran President Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández has been stabbed and shot to death in a prison in the Central American country.

Prison officials said Nery López Sanabria, also known as Magdaleno Meza Fúnez, was ambushed by other inmates in El Pozo prison on Saturday. His lawyer, Carlos Chajtur, blamed the Honduran government.

He was the alleged business partner of ex-congressman Antonio “Tony” Hernández, the president’s younger brother, who was found guilty of drug trafficking in a New York jail earlier in October.

Nearly a dozen notebooks belonging to López Sanabria appeared as evidence in the trial.

The deputy director of Honduras’s Penitentiary Institute, Germán McNeil, called his killing “a lamentable act that we will investigate to provide a detailed report.”