Three defendants accused of murdering an environmental activist in Honduras 11 months ago appeared before a court this Thursday for a preliminary hearing, the Judiciary reported. Activist and councilman Juan López was shot dead on the night of September 14 after leaving a church in Tocoa, 220 km northeast of Tegucigalpa. The crime was condemned by the UN and by Pope Francis.
“Once the preliminary hearing began, the Prosecutor’s Office formally charged those implicated in the violent death” of the 46-year-old activist, the Judiciary said in a statement. In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office requested that the charge of “criminal association” be added against the accused: Oscar Alexis Guardado, 27, Lenin Adonis Cruz, 30, and Daniel Juárez, 31.
The lawyers for Juárez and Cruz requested that their clients be “definitively acquitted,” while Guardado’s lawyer asked for more time to negotiate a “shortened procedure” with the Prosecutor’s Office, according to the statement.
The court later suspended the hearing, which will resume on August 28. Dozens of residents of Tocoa, along with Jesuit priest Ismael Moreno, gathered at the courthouse to demand justice. “There is a lot of desperation among the communities,” said the priest.
The activist had opposed an open-pit iron oxide mine in the Botaderos forest reserve, which he accused of polluting the environment. Days before his murder, he had demanded the resignation of Tocoa’s mayor, Adán Fúnez, after a video recorded in 2013 surfaced showing him negotiating bribes with drug traffickers.
The video also showed Congressman Carlos Zelaya, brother-in-law of President Xiomara Castro, which caused a political shake-up in the country. The legislator resigned his seat. The mayor denied involvement in López’s murder, for whom the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had ordered protective measures in October 2023.
In November 2021, López talked about the dangers faced by environmental activists in Honduras: “When you get involved in this country in defending common goods […] you clash with powerful interests,” he said. This crime evoked the case of renowned Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres, murdered in 2016 in one of the world’s deadliest countries for environmental defenders, according to the NGO Global Witness.
