A court in Honduras found seven men guilty of the 2016 murder of indigenous and environmental activist Berta Caceres, a winner of the Goldman Prize for environmental defenders.

Berta Caceres

Berta Caceres led a campaign to stop construction of hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque river, which the Lenca people considers sacred.  Gunmen burst into her home on 2 March 2016 - two days before her 45th birthday - and killed her, while also wounding another environmental activist from Mexico who played dead to survive.

The court found that executives of the Agua Zarca dam company Desa grew weary of delays caused by Caceres' activism, and they planned the killing and assembled a team of ex-military and company security agents to carry it out.  Two of the murderers were trained by the United States military in their capacity as members of Honduras' armed forces.

Caceres' family and colleagues welcomed the guilty verdicts, but they repeated demands that justice be delivered against the masterminds and financiers of the plot.

"Today there's no satisfaction, or happiness, but we are glad to see jailed the killers who murdered my mother simply for defending natural resources at a moment when she was defenceless," said Olivia Zuniga, Caceres' eldest daughter.  "We don't want revenge because we are not killers like them, but we demand that the masterminds behind the murder be brought to justice."