Honduras arrests powerful ex-mayor accused of masterminding killing of environmental defender

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduran authorities on Tuesday arrested three people, including a powerful politician, accused of masterminding the 2024 assassination of an environmental leader, which became a symbol of government corruption and the ongoing perils of protecting the environment in the region.

Adán Fúnez, former mayor of the city of Tocoa, was captured at his home on Tuesday for being considered the intellectual author of the killing, following years of accusations by religious and environmental leaders.

Juan López was an anti-corruption crusader who led a fierce community effort against an iron oxide mining project in Colon, a rural region of northwestern Honduras, which activists said put at risk the zone's dense jungles and crystalline waters, including protected reserve areas. López was one of the fiercest critics of then-mayor, Adán Fúnez, a supporter of the mine and close ally of Honduras' former President Xiomara Castro.

In September 2024, López called on Fúnez to step down because of a corruption scandal.

Days later, the environmental and human rights defender was shot six times in the chest and once in the head by a masked gunman, fueling demands for justice by the Biden administration, Pope Francis and the United Nations — and accusations against Fúnez, a power-broker in the region's decades-long bloody agrarian conflict. The death brought back stark memories of the global outcry over the 2016 murder of Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

More than a year later, Fúnez was arrested Tuesday with two others, businessman Héctor Eduardo Méndez and Juan Ángel Ramos Gallegos, who prosecutors accused of criminal association to the detriment of other fundamental rights.

“These three individuals are believed to be the intellectual authors of the environmentalist Juan López’s death,” Public Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Yuri Mora told The Associated Press.

The detentions come after a handful of other arrests months earlier, but Fúnez was long pinpointed by local environmental and religious leaders as the man who spearheaded the assassination. The oral and public trial of the three is set to begin next June.

Protecting the environment is a high-risk profession in Honduras. People like López often act as unwanted eyes and ears in resource-rich areas of Latin America, the most deadly region in the world for environmentalists, according to nongovernmental organization Global Witness.

Global Witness documented 117 defender killings in 2024, 82% of which were in Latin America. Five were killed in the relatively small Central American nation, and 18 the year before, according to the data in the most recent report. In López’s city of Tocoa, environmental defenders fighting the mining project have been getting picked off for years and eight activists were imprisoned for more two years in what lawyers said was retaliation for their work.

Dalila Santiago, a close friend and leader in López’s movement, said after rampant impunity in the Honduras, Fúnez's detention came as a shock. Santiago said the detentions are a sign that their fight for justice and to protect the surrounding lands was worth it, despite the bloody toll. She added that Honduran authorities must continue to go after others responsible and business leaders behind the mining project.

The Honduran companies behind the mine — Inversiones Los Pinares, Inversiones Ecotek and their parent company — face prosecution for the mine’s environmental destruction, launched by the Honduran Public Prosecutor's Office shortly after López's killing. The companies have defended the hundreds of jobs the mine created and their contributions to the region.

“We’ve been calling for justice for so long,” Santiago said. "And we need the masterminds behind this to be caught and punished.”

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