Verdict against eight men accused in the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist will be handed down on Thursday

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The verdict against eight men accused over the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres will be handed down on Thursday after a controversial five-week trial plagued by allegations of negligence and cover-ups.

Cáceres – who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize – was shot dead in March 2016, after a long battle against the internationally financed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque river, territory sacred to the indigenous Lenca people.

She died in the arms of her friend Gustavo Castro, a Mexican environmentalist, who was shot by a second gunman in the attack, but survived by pretending to be dead.

Cáceres had led numerous campaigns to protect indigenous territories from environmentally destructive mega-projects, as general coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh).

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Her murder sparked international outrage and affirmed Honduras’s ranking as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for defenders of land rights and natural resources. It was a bitter blow for the country’s social movements battling against a toxic mix of poverty, violence, corruption and impunity that has forced thousands to flee since a military coup in 2009.

Cáceres’s family and colleagues have attempted to expose the criminal networks responsible for the smear campaigns, surveillance, sexual harassment, false criminal charges, threats and ultimately her murder. But their quest for justice has been frustrated by restricted access to crucial evidence controlled by the public prosecutors.

Even before the trial opened, hopes that it would uncover the truth were dealt a blow when the judges excluded the family’s lawyers from proceedings.

“The victims were expelled because they demanded the whole truth, to find the intellectual authors and beneficiaries who planned and participated before, during and after the murder,” said Reinaldo Villalba, a Colombian human rights lawyer and member of a team of international trial observers.

“We’ve had to fight for information every step of the way,” said Cáceres’s youngest daughter, Laura Zúñiga Cáceres, in a victim impact statement. “This is an important moment to make legal precedents for the people [of this country], who are fleeing, who are bleeding.”

Zúñiga was among a group of Copinh members attacked with teargas by soldiers and riot police while trying to lay an altar in Cáceres’s memory near the courthouse on Day of the Dead.

Prosecutors have argued that Cáceres was monitored and persecuted with the help of informants paid by Desa, the company building the dam. Plans to kill her began in October 2015 when construction – and protests –resumed after a redesign, the court heard.

The state’s case was built around telephone data extracted from a dozen or so of the scores of phones seized. Data from laptops, tablets, hard drives and USBs was not extracted.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Berta Zúñiga Cáceres, left, daughter of slain indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres, attends an event at Honduras’s National Autonomous University, in Tegucigalpa, on 22 November. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

Information about Cáceres’s whereabouts and plans were shared via WhatsApp groups which included Desa shareholders from the Atala Zablah clan – one of the most powerful families in Honduras – security personnel and managers, the court heard.

Lawyers for all eight defendants disputed the conclusions made by the US-trained telephone expert.

Prosecutors said that the informants were managed by defendant Sergio Rodríguez, Desa’s environment and communities manager. Rodríguez told the court that the information was used only to protect the dam installation from vandalism by Cáceres and Copinh.

Rodríguez is not the only defendant linked to Desa.

Prosecutors allege that before and after the murder, the company president, David Castillo, a US-trained former military intelligence officer, coordinated with defendant Douglas Bustillo, Desa’s former security chief and a former US-trained army lieutenant . (Castillo faces trial separately.)

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Logistics were allegedly coordinated by Bustillo and his former army friend, US-trained special forces major Mariano Díaz, the court heard. At the time, Díaz’s phone was tapped as part of a drug trafficking and kidnap investigation.

Díaz’s defence lawyers said that he did not plan or provide the gun and money for the murder, telling the court: “Berta Cáceres was never mentioned in the phone calls – they were discussing other crimes, not murder.”

Prosecutors say Bustillo and Díaz coordinated with ex-special forces sergeant Henry Hernández, who allegedly recruited the gunmen.

Edilson Duarte is accused to driving the getaway car which was never found. 40 bullet casings found at Duarte’s house were not tested.

Elvin Rapalo is accused of shooting Cáceres three times in her bedroom with the .38 revolver found at the house of Duarte’s twin brother, Emerson.

Another .38 found in Díaz’s bedroom was not sent to ballistics.

The eighth defendant, Óscar Torres was also allegedly at the house on the night of the murder, but prosecutors failed to identify his role.

Castro, the only witness to the crime, offered to return to Honduras to formally identify the gunman who shot him. But for months his offer was inexplicably blocked by authorities.

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Instead, the court heard a a statement he gave to police less than 24 hours after the attack while still covered in blood.

Villalba said: “We saw unprepared witnesses, a badly prepared incomplete case and poor decisions by the judges which violated the rights of victims and defendants. Berta’s murder was a crime against humanity and the truth is a right for the victims, society and humanity.”

Defence lawyers also argued that prosecutors had failed to properly investigate other credible lines of inquiry.

In closing arguments, public prosecutors downgraded the charge against Emerson Duarte to concealment of the weapon, which carries a sentence of three to five years.

The other seven defendants, could face up to 30 years jail for murder, and 20 to 30 years for Castro’s attempted murder. All eight deny the charges.

• This article was amended on 3 December 2018 because an earlier version referred to a 38mm revolver, when a .38 revolver was meant. This has been corrected.