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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Thomas Graham in Villa de Etla, Mexico

He fought to stop the forest being felled. The price was 30 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit

A Mexican man in a T-shirt in front of a blue wall with a barred up window
Mexican environmental defender Pablo López Alavez, who is half way through a 30-year jail sentence. Photograph: Rodrigo Oropeza/The Guardian

The meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as “First things first”, “Live and let live” and “Little by little, you’ll go far”.

Pablo López Alavez, a 56-year-old environmental defender, has had nearly 15 years to contemplate these sentiments – and faces 15 more, after being imprisoned for murders he says he did not commit.

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