In Honduras, a former U.S.-trained Honduran military officer and businessman has been found guilty of plotting the 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, a Lenca land and water defender. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that David Castillo, the former president of the hydroelectric corporation DESA, was a co-perpetrator in Cáceres’s murder. Cáceres was assassinated as she led the fight against the construction of DESA’s massive hydroelectric dam on a river in southwestern Honduras that’s sacred to the Lenca people. Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, one of Berta Cáceres’s daughters, celebrated Castillo’s guilty verdict.

Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres: “We are very satisfied, because, against all the obstacles, against a system of impunity, we have managed to get the president of the company, the construction company of the hydroelectric dam project Agua Zarca, to be found guilty. He was a person that was protected by the economic groups of the oligarchs in this country.”