A Honduran court unexpectedly resolved on Thursday two injunctions filed a year ago and ordered that six Honduran environmentalists sentenced on Wednesday be released in the next few hours.
“What the court orders is the annulment of the entire process from the formal indictment (formal accusation),” Kenya Oliva, the defender of the environmentalists — eight in total — who were being accused of unjust deprivation, told The Associated Press. of liberty and aggravated arson.
The eight were accused in 2018 for their work in defense of water in the face of a mining project that allegedly operates illegally in the Carlos Escaleras Mejía Mountain National Park of Botaderos.
According to the Public Ministry, the environmentalists caused damage to private property and illegally detained a security expert during a confrontation with security guards from the Los Pinares mining company.
Six of them were sentenced on Wednesday and two were acquitted of criminal responsibility. One of the amparos was against the order of formal prosecution and the other because they were not granted a review of the prison measure at the time.
“They should have been released at the initial hearing (before reaching an oral and public trial), because the court considers that there was a violation of judicial protection and due process from the beginning,” Oliva said.
The lawyer regretted that the court has resolved the amparos late, one filed in March and the other in April 2021.
“In fact, the court should not have issued a ruling until the amparos were resolved,” he said.
After learning of the new ruling, hundreds of residents of the town of Trujillo, in the department of Colón, took to the streets to accompany the families of the eight environmentalists in order to celebrate their release.
The conviction on Wednesday of six environmentalists, defenders of the Guapinol river, was repudiated by several national and international organizations. Even national organizations were ready to present briefs so that an amnesty decree approved by Congress last week and published in the official newspaper La Gaceta on Saturday, February 5, could be applied.
The president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, Hugo Maldonado, told the AP that day that “the trial has been manipulated and there has been no due process in terms of the defense of the comrades,” for which they would seek amnesty.
“This verdict is scandalous and goes against Honduras’ obligations to guarantee the right to defend human rights. It must be canceled immediately. We will not stop suing the authorities until all Guapinol defenders are released immediately and unconditionally,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.
“The Honduran authorities must stop using the justice system to criminalize, intimidate and harass human rights defenders,” he said.
For her part, Isabel Albaladejo Escribano, representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras, had stated: “The Office I represent has repeatedly called for a review of the preventive detention of defenders since that the guarantees of due process are fulfilled based on the international obligations of Honduras in this matter.”
“We regret that, again and without proving the elements that justify maintaining preventive detention, defenders continue to be subjected to said measure,” added Albaladejo Escribano.
Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous countries for environmental activism. The most notorious crime to date is that of environmentalist Berta Cáceres, shot to death on March 3, 2016 by unknown assailants who entered her house in the municipality of La Esperanza, department of Intibucá.
According to data published by Global Witness on March 2, 2020, at least 27 defenders of land and territory had been killed since the attack on Cáceres. According to the statistics of Vía Campesina —an organization in Honduras that brings together several peasant organizations to defend their rights—, 12 more deaths occurred in the following months of that year.