A former member of a US-trained unit of the Honduran military says Berta Caceres was tops on a "hit list" distributed to Special Forces troops in the months before she was gunned down in her home.

The 20-year old First Sergeant said his commanding officer deserted and fled the country rather than obey the order.  "The lieutenant said he wasn't willing to go through with the order as the targets were decent people, fighting for their communities," he said.

The young soldier chose the same course, and adopted the pseudonym Rodrigo Cruz to go public with his story rather than his real name.  "If I went home, they'd kill me," he said.  "Ten of my former colleagues are missing.  I'm 100 percent certain that Berta Caceres was killed by the army," he told The Guardian newspaper.

Berta Caceres was awarded the Goldman Prize for campaign against the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, which will destroy a valley where the indigenous Lenca people live.  On 3 March, gunmen burst into the home of Berta Caceres, shot her dead, and shot another environmentalist who played dead to survive.  That witness later said that he didn't hear the noises of any vehicles in between the arrival of the killers and the "arrival" of investigators.  He also alleged the police altered the crime scene.  He has since left the country for his home in Mexico.

Five men have been arrested for the Caceres murder; that includes employees of the company developing the dam and an active duty major in the Honduran army.  Major Mariano Diaz Chavez was a graduate of an elite special operations course taught by the US Special Forces.  "Rodrigo Cruz" was a member of the Inter-institutional Security Force (Fusina), which was also trained by the Americans. 

"Cruz's testimony suggests death squads are targeting political opposition, but the justice system is so broken, and directly controlled by figures implicated in corruption, that there is no one (in Honduras) who can credibly investigate," said Annie Bird, director of the group Rights and Ecology which documents human rights abuses in Honduras.

The US has given Honduras an estimated US$200 Million in police and military aid since 2010 as part of its efforts to stem organized crime.  But violence against activists and environmentalists in Honduras increased dramatically after the 2009 military-backed coup that forced democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya from power.  The United States recognized the coup government over Zelaya.