I Did Not Expect This

David Castillo, former president of Desarrollos Energeticos Sociedad Anonima (DESA),has been convicted for the assassination of indigenous environmental activist Berta Caceres and sentenced to 22 years.

I did not expect to see justice done, not in Honduras, not post the 2009 coup that drove progressive president Manuel Zelaya from office and country.  (As an aside, the right coup was supported by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ……… Thanks, guys)

David Castillo, a former top business executive found guilty for his role in the assassination of Honduran Indigenous leader Berta Caceres, has been sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison by a Honduran court.

Castillo, a US-trained former Honduran army intelligence officer and business executive, was the president of Desarrollos Energeticos Sociedad Anonima (DESA), which was building the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam in Indigenous Lenca territory in northwestern Honduras.

What, another foreign graduate of a US military institution, in this case West Point, notwhat used to be called The School of the Americas involved in corruption, terrorism, and murder?  

One does wonder where they learned this. 

Caceres, as the head of the Council of Organized Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH), had been the most visible and vocal member of the resistance to the dam’s construction.

But after years of threats, she was assassinated by a hit squad in her home in the town of La Esperanza on March 2, 2016.

Castillo was accused by Honduran prosecutors of being one of the top links in a complex chain of command that organised and directed the hit squad, which included former and active-duty members of the Honduran military as well as sicarios, or hired assassins.

Notwithstanding his position as president of DESA, there are still concerns that Castillo was not the HMFIC of this scheme, and fingers have been pointed at the Atala family, which is not unreasonable, as they were the ones who were best positioned to profit from this murder:

………

“People should know that David Castillo was just an employee who followed orders and was part of a structure [that included] very wealthy parts of the Atala Zablah family. There’s so much more to do in this case that by no means stops with David Castillo’s sentencing.”

The Atala Zablah family was a key shareholder in the DESA project and is one of the most powerful families in Honduras, with numerous investments in finance, construction, and sports. The family has long denied any involvement in Casceres’s killing.

I'm inclined to think that David Castillo was not the decision maker on this.