Berta Cáceres, indigenous activist, environmentalist and feminist, was murdered at her home in La Esperanza (Honduras) on 3 March 2016. Mexican environmental activist Gustavo Castro, who was beside him, was also wounded in the murder. Two and a half years have passed since the trial began, which will in principle be extended for a period of one month, on Monday, 17 September.

COPINH (Citizen Council of Honduras and Civic Council of Indigenous Peoples) has denounced that the eight individuals prosecuted are the material perpetrators of the murder, who carried out their task of killing Cáceres. But, as they stress, the intellectual authors, who were the ones who articulated the plan to assassinate Cáceres, do not appear among the accused. They criticize that this 'makes invisible' the political character of the murder of a young woman shot dead.

“Apart from the mandatory minimum, the jury has not accepted anything,” said Luis Díaz-Terán, friend of Cáceres, to El Salto. Díaz-Terán explains that we are dealing with a process in which the suspect owner of the company DESA does not agree to be questioned and that he has been wrong from the outset. He says that they will manage to "punish at the very most the sicario and the other". But the Sicarians, as the members of COPINH have stressed, are not the intellectual perpetrators of the murder.

The interview shows the existence of various indications that the company DESA is behind the death of Cáceres. Months before the death of Berta Cáceres, in December 2015, two Sicarios were arrested in a police control located on the road leading to La Esperanza. One of them had just left prison after paying the bail from the company DESA. The police found the weapons in the car of the three tourists and took them to the police station. The lawyers of Desa appeared in defence of them and, together with the payment of the bond, the three were released with their weapons. A police member informed COPINH members about the incident and, according to the Sicarians’ statements, reported that DESA had hired them “with an order to assassinate the council members.”

Who is behind the company DESA

According to Díaz-Terán, behind the company DESA in the field of Energy Development is the Atalía Zablah family. Its members are banks, construction companies and mine owners in Central America, and the five Honduran families control everything. “People with incredible economic power,” according to Díaz-Terán. Following the 2009 coup d ' état, 45 per cent of Honduran lands were granted, almost entirely indigenous areas with natural resources. Díaz-Terán explains that this was a “business organized by groups of economic power” within companies dedicated mainly to the exploitation of natural resources, and adds that these families have always “functioned through the bullet”.

The company DESA is in charge of the construction works of the dam that was in the fight of Berta Cáceres.