The Honduras Supreme Court [official website, in Spanish] on Monday temporarily suspended [press release, PDF, in Spanish] the murder trial of eight men accused of killing Honduran environmental rights activist Berta Cáceres.

Cáceres was killed inside her home in 2016. There is believed to have been collusion between state security forces and Desarrollos Energeticos SA, the company in charge of a hydroelectric project that Cáceres protested for years, winning a Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015.

According to the court, five related filings, submitted just a week prior, must first be resolved by the Court of Criminal Appeals before the trial can proceed, including the contention that an “arbitrary decision” was made by the judges upon rejection of witnesses, experts and documentary evidence lending support to the formulation of a criminal conspiracy. Based on this, and other issues, counsel representing the family have requested for the judges to recuse themselves.

Alleging a high level of impunity, COPINH [official website], the group Cáceres led, and the family’s counsel, Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice are planning to petition that the case be moved to another court, asserting [press release, in Spanish] that the rights of the victim are not guaranteed and that the court has shown its inability to be impartial by allowing the prosecutor to conceal information.

In 2017 the International Expert Advisory Panel (GAIPE) [advocacy website, in Spanish] released [Berkeley Law report] an independent investigatory report [text, PDF] regarding Cáceres’ murder, and found that a “criminal network comprised of DESA executives and employees, state agents, and hitmen are responsible for killing Berta Cáceres.” In the same report, GAIPE reported that the despite the finding of sufficient evidence to file charges against company executives for Caceres murder, the Public Ministry has failed to do so.