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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Nina Lakhani

El Salvador faces scrutiny for ‘political’ trial of five environmental activists

people hold yellow triangular signs featuring a skull and an outline of El Salvador
Catholics participate in a march against mining in El Salvador in San Salvador in 2017. Five activists who helped secure a mining ban that year are on trial. Photograph: José Cabezas/Reuters

Five environmental activists who helped secure a historic mining ban in El Salvador are facing life imprisonment for an alleged civil war-era crime, in a case that has been condemned by UN and legal experts as baseless and politically motivated.

The trial against Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, who were arrested in January 2023 for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989, opened on Tuesday in Sensuntepeque, in the department of Cabañas in northern El Salvador.

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