"Exonerated environmental defenders to face murder retrial in El Salvador", 02 February 2025

...Five Salvadorian environmental defenders who were exonerated of bogus civil war charges will face retrial this week amid growing evidence of political interference.

Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, were acquitted in October over the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The court in Cabañas in northern El Salvador ruled that the state had failed to prove a crime had taken place, or that the defendants, former leftwing guerrilla fighters, were linked to any wrongdoing.

The defendants, who were at the forefront of a 13-year grassroots-led campaign to ban metal mining, were arrested in January 2023 amid warnings that President Nayib Bukele was planning to overturn the historic 2017 law.

The environmental leaders, who are all over 60 and suffer from a range of chronic medical issues, spent nearly two gruelling years fighting the charges, including nine months in which they were held in overcrowded prisons...

In late December, the mining ban the five men had campaigned for was overturned...

Last week, hundreds of leading human rights, environmental and faith-based organizations, and academics and lawyers released a letter calling on Bukele to drop the “politically motivated charges” against the five environmental leaders, and reinstate the mining ban...

Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said: “This appears to be a case of retaliation for human rights activism"...