- The court has considered Roberto David Castillo Mejía as one of those responsible for the murder of activist Berta Cáceres. Castillo was executive chairman of the company Desa, which was building dams on the Gualcarque river, sacred to the people of Lenca, which Cáceres fought against when she died at the age of 45 in 2016.
According to El Salto, the Council of Popular Movements of the Peoples of Honduras (COPINH) has welcomed the prosecutor's letter: "This is the victory of the Honduran people. This means that criminal structures have not managed to exploit the justice system". The daughter of Cáceres, Laura Zuñiga, has spread the following message on social networks: "They believed that impunity was forever and they were wrong, people know how to do justice," he added.
One of the daughters of Cáceres, Berta Zuñiga, is coordinator of COPINH and this institution has called for clarification of the responsibility of four members of the Zablah family. This family is one of the richest in Honduras and the owners of the company Desa. This family was the one who elected David Castillo as executive president and before taking office was a military one, had worked in the Intelligence Directorate of the Defense Secretariat and had trained in the U.S. military academy.
Open case
The Office of the Attorney General of Honduras has found that Castillo ordered the killing of Cáceres "as part of the plan so that there is no impediment to the operations that Desa wanted to carry out in the Gualcarque River, linked to its ancestors, Lenca". The case remains open with the intention of searching for intellectual authors.
The Centre for Democracy Research (CIS) exposes the relationship between the works of the Gualcarque River and corruption.