The summary has been composed by IRTF, excerpted from summaries by Honduras Now and Daniel Langmeier
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What’s going on in Guapinol:
Orbin Nahun Hernandez, Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, Jeremias Martinez Diaz, Ewer Alexander Cedillo, Jose Abelino Cedillo, Arnol Javier Aleman, Kelvin Alejandro Romero, Jose Daniel Marquez. These are the names of the defenders of the Guapinol & San Pedro Rivers near the Honduran Atlantic Coast who have been illegally imprisoned – held in pre-trial detention for over two years.
The rivers that originate in the Carlos Escaleras National Park in Honduras and are an important water source to the Guapinol communities are being threatened by plans of the Honduran mining company Inversiones Los Pinares (and supported by the Charlotte, NC-based company Nucor Steel) to illegally expand their operations into a protected area of the National Park. The eight water defenders who, along with dozens of their community members, have protested against the company and their illegal and environmentally harmful operations, have falsely been prosecuted and have been in prison since September 2019, waiting for the trial to begin in December 2021.
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Trial Summary:
The charges that the Guapinol 8 face are based on events that occurred on September 7, 2018, in the area of the Carlos Escaleras National Park, as local community members were protesting the company’s operations. Inversiones Los Pinares, together with security officer Santos Hernandez Correa, have accused the eight water defenders of unjust detention of Santos Correa and two charges of aggravated arson against both Correa and the company. The defenders have since been unjustly imprisoned for over two years as the Honduran state has ignored international calls for their release. Now, finally, after several postponements, the trial is getting close to the end. Here is a summary of what the trial has looked like so far and the most important events from each day.
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Days One and Two: December 1, 2021
The trial was set to begin on December 1, 2021. The defense team and prosecutors met in court December 1 and 2, but then the trial was postponed until December 9 because the defense attorneys were not given all the evidence that the prosecutors had planned to present in court. The defense attorneys requested sufficient time to review the prosecutors’ evidence, including a video, a field report of the events of September 7, 2018 and over 200 pages of legal files.
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Day Three: December 9, 2021
The prosecutors started the trial by presenting their view on the events that occured on September 7, 2018. They stated that Santos Correa, the mining company’s security officer who was at the project site that morning with several other workers, heard gunshots in the distance. He was then met by a group of protesters, allegedly including the eight defenders on trial, who, he claims, were threatening him with rocks, sticks and weapons. Correa claims that he attempted to initiate a peaceful dialogue with the protesters but that they instead detained him and set his vehicle, as well as a container on-site, on fire. He claims to have been released from detention after several hours, after the police arrived on scene.
The charges against the Guapinol Water Defenders are: the unjust detention of Santos Correa, punishable with 3-6 years in prison; aggravated arson towards Correa; aggravated arson towards Inversiones Los Pinares; and (later added) aggravated damages towards one of the containers of Inversiones Los Pinares.
While the judges were opening the trial, the defense was surprised with the addition of the new charge of aggravated damages against Inversiones Los Pinares. Despite the defense attorneys objecting to the unlawful addition of the fourth charge, the court ruled in favor of the accusers and added the charge to the already existing ones. The defense team asked the court to reconsider their decision, and the trial was suspended until the next day.
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Day Four: December 10, 2021
After reassessing the addition of a fourth charge by the prosecutors, the court once again ruled in favor of Inversiones Los Pinares, even though the correct legal procedures for adding a charge during trial weren’t followed. The defense then denounced the three judges working the case for being biased towards the mining company and its private accusers, relying on the unlawful ruling for adding the charge. (This was the same court that had ruled that the defenders had to remain in pre-trial detention for more than two years.) The trial was suspended once more, pending a ruling by an appeals court on a petition submitted by the defense team for recusal of the judges.
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Day Five: January 13, 2022
After yet another Christmas spent in pre-trial detention, the trial against the Guapinol Water Defenders was resumed one month after the last suspension. The defenders’ petition for recusal of the judges had been rejected, which meant that the trial would continue with the same three judges.
The fifth day of the trial started with the defense presenting seven documents to the judges that presented new evidence on how the mining project is inside of a protected area and is therefore not environmentally feasible, showing that the local community had good reason to exercise their legal right to protest and protect their environment and water supplies. The prosecution objected to all evidence presented. The trial was then suspended until the next day to give the judges time to decide what additional evidence would be admitted.
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Day Six: January 14, 2022
The judges ruled that all new documents presented by the defenders the day before would be accepted as evidence, and all three of the defense’s witnesses would be admitted. The court also ruled that the defense would be allowed to review new evidence presented by the prosecutors on a USB stick, which the defense later objected to because the videos had been edited. The judges ruled that the USB stick would be allowed as evidence, but its authenticity and therefore relevance to the trial would be evaluated later.
Other evidence presented by the prosecutors was admitted, and the trial was suspended to continue on Monday, January 17.
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Day Seven: January 17, 2022
The prosecution presented their evidence, including proof that the damaged containers belonged to Inversiones Los Pinares as well as a legal complaint by security officer Santos Correa, stating that the protesters were armed, which contradicts other evidence. He also told the judges that he would not be able to identify any of those involved in the events of September 7. The defense then objected to two of the documents presented by the accusers, saying that they were internal reports written by the mining company’s head of physical security with reports and photos of the day of the incident. With that, the prosecution had violated legal regulations prohibiting private security forces from monitoring and gathering evidence without a license. The court would be ruling over whether these two documents would be admitted as evidence the next day.
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Day Eight: January 18, 2022
On Day Eight of the trial, the prosecution’s star witness, Santos Hernandez Correa, gave his testimony, depicting the day of the incident and responding to questions by all parties of the trial. During his testimony the defense noted a lot of contradictions compared to Correa’s previous declarations about the events of September 7, 2018. He had changed his description of the types of weapons the protesters were allegedly carrying, the amount of money they had stolen from him, and the names of those holding him in detention several times. The defense also pointed out that Santos Correa is actively employed by Inversiones Los Pinares, suggesting a personal interest in the prosecution winning the case.
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Day Nine: January 19, 2022
Following Santos Correa’s testimony, the prosecution's second witness, Head of Physical Security Miguel Rafel Izaguirre Padilla, took the stand and detailed his version of the incidents that occured on September 7, 2018. While doing so, he exposed many of the false claims by Correa from the day before. He testified that Santos Correa had never been detained by the protesters and had access to his cellphones the whole time, contradicting a prior statement by Correa that he had been held in detention for hours and his phones stolen. Izaguirre Padilla also stated that the Guapinol Water Defenders stayed friendly throughout the day of the incident, and that he could understand the communities’ protests regarding the companys’ mining project, as it created a lot of conflict for the locals.
As a last order for the day, a medical forensics doctor was called in to stand and reported that he had not found any serious injuries on Santos Correa’s body after the incident, except for some bruises and marks by an unidentified object.
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Day Ten: January 20, 2022
Two more witnesses for the prosecution made their testimonies. The first one, Santos Omar Garcia Hernandez, who works with Santos Hernandez Correa, stated that he was present on the mining company’s project site to document the protest. He contradicted Correa’s previous statement that there had been gunshots before the protesters arrived on site. Garcia Hernandez testified that he was scared when he heard what he thought were gunshots, but that Correa calmed him down, telling him that the shots were just firecrackers. Many other parts of García Hernandez’s testimony were factually impossible or easily refutable.
Later on, the prosecution called forestry engineer Carlos Mauricio Echeverria as an expert witness to affirm that Inversiones Los Pinares had followed the correct environmental procedures to allow their operations in the protected area. The defense objected, as the prosecution had failed to admit the witness as an expert and to present the technical report as evidence earlier on during the trial. The judges decided to let Echeverria testify as a witness, but not as an expert.
During his testimony, the witness admitted that he had undergone several mistakes during his site visit and that he had not consulted any of the local community members about their water sources.
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Day Eleven: January 21, 2022
The prosecuters called in a protected witness who worked with Inversiones Los Pinares. The witness described the individual who had allegedly fired shots that day. The testimony, however, contradicted a description previously given by another witness. Hector Yosis Turcios, a police officer who was at the scene on September 7, 2018, then took the stand. Hector Yosis Turcios testified that when he picked him up private security officer Santos Correa, there were no signs of injury on Correa. Hector Yosis Turcios also mentioned that Juan López, a member of the environmental defense committee, was also present and that López was respectful and helpful. None of the witnesses that day mentioned any of the eight accused water defenders or confirmed their participation in the incident.
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Day Twelve: January 24, 2022
Day Twelve of the Guapinol trial started with the defenders expressing serious concerns about armed men in civilian clothes who were standing outside the courtroom, and saying that they were intimidating the water defenders and their family members in front of the courthouse. The prosecutors said that the men were private security, and the court finally ordered them to leave the building.
As the trial got started, two agents of the DPI (Dirección Policial de Investigaciones, or Investigative Police Unit), Selvin Eduardo Silva and Lester Yalil Martinez, took the stand. They presented a USB stick containing videos from the day of the incident that would be viewed later in the trial, as well as a diagram depicting the scene of the incident and where the car and the damaged containers were located. Even though the defense made it clear that the diagram was unlawfully constructed and that the document was different from what the prosecution had previously presented, the court ruled to allow it as evidence in the case.
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Day Thirteen: January 25, 2022
Both the prosecution and the defense showed important video evidence in court. The prosecution’s video evidence showed that the protesters on that day were not armed, defeating the claims made by their own witnesses, and other information contradicting prior descriptions of how the events took place.
The defense’s evidence consisted of a live-broadcast and interviews from the day and scene of the incident, where several people stated that the only ones armed that day were those involved with or working for the mining company.
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Day Fourteen: January 26, 2022
On Day Fourteen of the trial, the prosecutors called in their last witnesses, one of them being forensics psychologist Oscar Aguilar. He had examined Santos Hernandez Correa more than two years after the incident and stated that he could see signs of trauma and difficulty recalling memories. The defense pointed out that the results were not scientific evidence and were strongly reliant on the person examining Correa.
The other witnesses presented by the prosecution were not able to attend the trial and therefore testified in the form of audio recordings and an investigative police report. Again, the testimonies contradicted previous witness statements. One of the witnesses, Akbar Reyes Lagos, is seen as having a personal interest in criminalizing the protesters because he is employed by Inversiones Los Pinares.
The prosecution rested their case, and the judges suspended the trial until the next day, when the defense would start presenting their evidence.
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Day Fifteen: January 27, 2022
The defense began presenting their evidence in court. First up was the witness and human rights defender Juana Esquivel, who in her testimony confirmed the environmental and social damage that Inversiones Los Pinares’ mining operations were imposing on local communities in and around Guapinol. She also testified about the threats and violence by groups established by the company that the community members had to endure.
The defense team presented six documents that concluded once again that the mining operation was not feasible due to the expected environmental impacts on the protected area in the national park, and that the boundaries of that area had been modified solely to obtain a mining permit.
The trial will continue on February 1 and concluding remarks from both sides are expected on February 4, as the trial comes to an end. In her inauguration speech on January 27, the new honduran president Xiomara Castro called for justice for and the freedom of the Guapinol Water Defenders.
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January 31, 2022
The UN Human Rights Commission for Honduras, OACNUDH, met with family members and the legal representatives of the Guapinol Defenders together with Human Rights Minister Natalie Roque and Blanca Izaguirre, head of the Honduran Human Rights Commission (CONADEH).
February 1, 2022
According to the nonprofit human rights group Bufete Estudios Para la Dignidad, the evidence presented in the trial so far has not only confirmed the innocence of the eight water defenders but has also exposed the illegal practices of the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares. They urge the revocation of the company’s license to construct the iron oxide mine within the protected area of the Carlos Escaleras National Park.
February 3, 2022
As the Guapinol Water defenders complete 29 months (38 months in the case of Jeremías Martínez) in pre-trial detention, the trial is set to conclude tomorrow, February 4, 2022, at 8.30am, in the court in Tocoa, Colón Department. As the trial is closing, the prosecution seems desperate, issuing online campaigns and press releases to defame the water defenders, which could harm them, their legal representatives and their family members. The national media is publishing outlandish claims in favor of the company (Inversiones Los Pinares) in what appears to be paid advertising. There have also been documented incidents of intimidation and threats at the local level against the water defenders, their families, the environmental organization Municipal Committee for the Defense of Public and Common Goods, the legal team, and others who have been accompanying the judicial process.
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Day Sixteen: February 4, 2022
On the last day of the trial, both the prosecution and the defense presented their closing remarks. The prosecution started, presenting an overview of their evidence and the witness testimonies but failing to analyze and make connections between the different statements. The prosecutors, as well as Inversiones Los Pinares’ private accusers, also avoided addressing the contradictions within their evidence. They concluded by asking that the eight water defenders be convicted on counts of the charges made in the beginning of the trial, which could result in 18-36 years in prison for each of the accused.
Then, the defense made their closing remarks, pointing out that most of the witnesses presented by the prosecution had a personal connection with the mining company and were therefore likely not impartial in the case. They further explained all the contradictions in the prosecution’s evidence and witness testimonials, suggesting that most of the information presented was not true and that there was no real evidence of the eight water defenders using the weapons or acting as described by the witnesses. The defense ended by asking that their clients be absolved. Inversiones Los Pinares began their operations in an illegal manner and the community members were protesting and carrying out their right to defend their water supplies.
The case now rests with the judges. The verdict will be announced on Wednesday, February 9, at 9:00am.
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Find out more about the Guapinol Water Defenders and their trial:
