The man convicted last year of coordinating the killing of Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres was sentenced Monday to more than 22 years in prison, angering the victim’s relatives because the sentence was particularly lower than the maximum.
Sentenced to Roberto David Castillo Mejía to 22 years and six months in prison for the murder of Cáceres, a member of the Lenca Indigenous organization that led the opposition to a dam assignment in which Castillo Mejía participated. You may appeal.
Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, daughter of the activist who protested with others in court, said she would do everything imaginable to ask for a harsher sentence.
“It is incredibly outrageous that the maximum penalty has been applied,” Zúniga Cáceres said, noting that the convicted hitmen were sentenced to longer sentences.
In December 2019, seven men were convicted of Cáceres’ murder. Four men were sentenced to 34 years for the murder and 16 years for attempted murder. Three others won 30-year sentences for their roles.
“This is the result of a judicial formula that has nothing to do with justice, that promotes impunity,” Zúniga Cáceres said, adding that he is still waiting for the capture of others involved in the order to kill his mother.
At the time, prosecutors said the killers were acting on behalf of a company, Desa, which was building a dam that the activist opposed. Castillo Mejía, who leads the project, was arrested in 2018.
Castillo Mejia allegedly paid the hitmen, provided logistics and resources to those already convicted, according to prosecutors.
Cáceres co-founder of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. He helped organize opposition to the Agua Zarca dam, which will be built on the Galcarque River. The river has no secular importance to the other Lenca peoples and is an essential source of water. The prey allocation remains frozen.
Cáceres won the prestigious Goldman Prize for environmental activism in 2015. He murdered at his home in La Esperanza on March 3, 2016. A Mexican activist who was there with her also shot, but survived.
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