Salvadoran court clears anti-mining activists of civil war murder
by AFP Staff Writers
San Salvador Sept 24, 2025

A court in El Salvador on Wednesday acquitted eight former guerrillas, including five anti-mining campaigners, of a civil war-era murder in a trial criticized by NGOs as politicized. The five environmental activists were the driving forces behind a 2017 metal mining ban, which President Nayib Bukele, a staunch ally of US President Donald Trump, has repealed. Several NGOs believe the trial was an attempt to punish Pedro Rivas, Teodoro Pacheco, Saul Rivas, Alejandro Lainez and Miguel Gamez for their activism. Prosecutors accused the five activists and three fellow former members of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front of murdering Maria Ines Alvarenga in August 1989. The prosecutors argued that they took Alvarenga for an army informant. Announcing their acquittal, one of the three judges in the San Salvador court trying the case called for the decision to "be respected." The defendants were also cleared of illicit association and deprivation of liberty. The prosecution can appeal. The eight had already been acquitted at a first trial in October last year. A higher court later ordered a retrial, but the accused refused to attend the proceedings and were tried in absentia. Alvarenga died in the northeastern community of Santa Marta, an area affected by the country's 1980-1992 civil war, which left an estimated 75,000 dead and more than 7,000 missing, according to official figures. A complaint over her death was filed with prosecutors in April 2022, over three decades later. Alfredo Leiva, leader of the Santa Marta Economic and Social Development Association, to which the accused environmentalists belong, welcomed the ruling. "It's what we've been waiting for for more than two years," he said. Related Links
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