Authorities in Honduras arrested four people in the murder of internationally known environmentalist and indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres.  It comes two months after masked gunmen burst into her home and shot her, and seriously wounded a fellow campaigner from Mexico who survived by playing dead.

Police arrested the four in various locations during "Operation Jaguar", ten simultaneous raids in early morning raids in the capital Tegucigalpa, and the coastal cities of La Ceiba and Trujillo - based on "scientific evidence that support the allegations presented," according to a statement from Honduras' Public Ministry.  Although police initially claimed that Ms. Caceres might have been killed on 3 March in the course of a robbery, it turns out the suspects have ties to the military and to the construction company that was the focus of her environmental activism.

The four are identified as Sergio Ramon Rodriguez Orellana, Douglas Geovanny Bustillo, Mariano Diaz Chavez, and Edilson Duarte Meza.  Days before she was killed, Berta told police that Rodriguez Orellana and Bustillo threatened her life. 

Rodriguez Orellana is an engineer for the Agua Zarca dam being built by Desarrollos Energeticos SA (DESA).  Ms. Caceres and her group the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh) were trying to stop the project because of the damage it would do to a river considered sacred by the indigenous Lenca people.  Bustillo is a retired military officer and the former head of DESA's security detail.  Duarte Meza is also a former military man, and local media reports that Chavez is a current member of the Honduran armed forces.

Berta Caceres' family criticized the slow pace of the investigation, and say they found out about the arrests on the news. 

"The Honduran state is too closely linked to the murder of my mother to carry out an independent investigation," said Berta's youngest daughter Laura Caceres in an interview with The Guardian newspaper.  "It is the government who awarded the dam commission and the government who sent military and police to work with DESA's private security guards, who threatened my mother."

In 2015, Berta Caceres was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize for her work opposing the Agua Zarca dam, recognition that her daughter says was crucial to pushing the police to solve the case.

"If it wasn't for our struggle and the international pressure for justice, my mother's murder would already be extinct," she said.  "We have woken up to this news but it doesn’t change our demands for an international investigation."

Honduras has so far rejected offers from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to send a team of experts to conduct an independent investigation into the Caceres killing, as well as the murders of other environmentalists - 109 of whom were murdered between 2010 and 2015.  That makes Honduras the world's most dangerous country for environmental activists.