Environmentalists acquitted after contentious murder trial in El Salvador

Six former guerrillas, whose trial for a civil war-era murder was criticised by fellow environmentalists as politicised, have been acquitted by a court in El Salvador.

Prosecutors had sought up to 36 years in prison for the former rebels of the hard-left Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

But the judges acquitted them “due to the statute of limitations” and ordered their immediate release, the defence lawyer Carolina Herrador said after the hearing in the city of Sensuntepeque. The court upheld arrest warrants for two other fugitive suspects, Herrador said.

Prosecutors accused the eight former guerrillas, who were arrested in January 2023, of killing a woman in 1989 because they suspected she was an army informant. Five of them had also been part of an environmental campaign for a ban on metal mining that was introduced in 2017, which activists fear the president, Nayib Bukele, wants to reverse.

“We never had any doubt about our innocence. Today we have come out with our heads held high. We were not mistaken about our innocence,” Pedro Rivas, one of the environmentalists, said. Supporters outside the court shouted “Freedom!” and greeted the activists with hugs.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders and other experts expressed concern in a letter to Bukele’s government after the 2023 arrests that the case was an attempt to intimidate environmentalists.

The activists’ supporters argued that the speed of the trial contrasted with the lack of an investigation into massacres the military has been accused of carrying out during the 1979-1992 civil war.

The case was motivated by “powerful political and economic interests” targeting opponents of mining, David Morales, of the nongovernmental organisation Cristosal, said.