Outcry over 'politically motivated' retrial of anti-mining activists in El Salvador murder case

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

- Nina Lakhani

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 successful 13-year grassroots-led campaign to ban metal mining, were arrested in January 2023 amid warnings that El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, was planning to overturn the historic 2017 anti-mining law.

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

After their acquittal celebrations were short-lived. The attorney general, a close political ally of Bukele, successfully appealed against the verdict in early December and the men face a retrial on the same charges of murder and illicit association.