On Wednesday, Feb. 2, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, which has been working with a number of human rights organizations in the framework of the Observatory for Justice for the Guapinol River Defenders, sent an urgent letter to U.S. human rights attache to Honduras, Ariel Jahner, urging action on the case.

These men have been imprisoned for over two years pretrial and last week parties rested after concluding the evidentiary stage of proceedings by both the public and private prosecutors representing the mining company, Inversiones Los Pinares affiliated with the US Nucor Corporation.

After having observed the entirety of the trial, including filmed footage of the events leading to the arrests, the NLG IC and other human rights observers are very concerned about numerous irregularities and limitations to a fair trial based on the clearly partial behavior of the judicial panel in favor of the prosecution and mining company.

The Observatory has created daily bulletins of the proceedings (https://www.guapinolresiste.org/observatorio). As the trial is expected to conclude on Friday, Feb. 4, the NLG IC strongly encouraged the U.S. embassy to be physically present in Tocoa to observe the parties deliver their conclusions. Other diplomatic corps members and UN agencies plan to attend the hearing. Given the important relationship between the US and Honduras and the resources being directed towards ending corruption and human rights abuses as well as the political climate, the IC at minimum urges the Embassy observe and monitor the hearing via the live broadcast on Judicial TV and Facebook Live.

Read more about the case at this site: https://www.guapinolresiste.org/post/trial-of-guapinol-river-defenders-to-conclude-this-friday-in-honduras

Download the letter sent by the IC