El Salvador faces scrutiny for 'political' trial of five environmental activists

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Source: The Guardian

El Salvador faces scrutiny for ‘political’ trial of five environmental activists

UN and legal experts have condemned prosecution of anti-mining campaigners over alleged civil war-era killing

Nina Lakhani
Wed 9 Oct 2024 16.43 BST
Last modified on Wed 9 Oct 2024 17.43 BST

Five environmental activists who helped secure a historic mining ban in El Salvador are facing life imprisonment for an alleged civil war-era crime, in a case that has been condemned by UN and legal experts as baseless and politically motivated.

The trial against Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, who were arrested in January 2023 for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989, opened on Tuesday in Sensuntepeque, in the department of Cabañas in northern El Salvador.

The case has proceeded in almost total secrecy amid widespread allegations of legal violations – and repeated calls for the charges to be dismissed from UN experts, and hundreds of international lawyers, academics and rights groups.

The defendants, who were at the forefront of a 13-year grassroots-led campaign to ban metal mining to protect the country’s dwindling water and farmland from further contamination, were arrested amid warnings that President Nayib Bukele was planning to overturn the 2017 historic law.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/09/el-salvador-trial-environmental-activists-mining