The mayor of Honduras has been arrested for trying to kill environmentalists | Crime Stories

Adan Funez was one of three men arrested this week in connection with the shooting of police officer Juan Lopez.

Honduran authorities have arrested three people, including a powerful politician, who is accused of planning to assassinate the leader of the 2024 environment, an event that has become a symbol of government corruption.

Adan Funez, the former mayor of the city of Tocoa, was arrested at his home on Tuesday on suspicion of being the mastermind of the massacre, following years of accusations by religious and environmental leaders.

Juan Lopez was an anti-corruption campaigner who led the fight against iron oxide mining in Colon, a rural area in northwestern Honduras, which activists said endangered rainforests and salt water, including protected areas.

Lopez was one of the most vocal opponents of Funez, the local mayor at the time, as well as a supporter of the mine and a close friend of former Honduran President Xiomara Castro, whose term ended this year.

In September 2024, Lopez asked Funez to resign for fraud.

A few days later, the environmentalist and human rights defender was shot nine times in the chest and once in the head by a masked man, prompting the Pope Francis to do justice, the United Nations and the administration of the President of the United States Joe Biden.

The accusations also surfaced against Funez, a powerful figure in the decades-long agrarian war. The death also brought back memories of the international outcry over the 2016 killing of Honduran environmentalist Berta Caceres.

Funez’s arrest Tuesday comes more than a year after the arrest.

The former mayor was arrested together and two others, businessman Hector Eduardo Méndez and Juan Angel Ramos Gallegos, whom prosecutors accuse of collaborating with criminals to violate human rights.

“These three people are believed to be responsible for the death of environmentalist Juan Lopez,” Public Prosecutor’s spokesman Yuri Mora told The Associated Press.

The arrest comes after another arrest several months ago, but Funez has long been identified by local and religious leaders as the man behind the killings. The trial of the three will begin next June.

Protecting the environment is a high-risk activity in Honduras. People like Lopez often act as unwanted eyes and ears in wealthy Latin America, the world’s deadliest region for environmentalists, according to the non-governmental organization Global Witness.

Global Witness is listed 117 killing environmental and land protectors in Latin America alone in 2024, which accounted for 82 percent of the global total.

In Lopez’s city of Tocoa, environmentalists fighting mining have been fighting for years. Eight activists were jailed for another two years in what lawyers said was retaliation for their work.

Dalila Santiago, a close friend and leader of Lopez’s group, said that, after widespread impunity in Honduras, Funez’s arrest on Tuesday was surprising.

He added that the Honduran authorities should continue to pursue other responsible leaders and businesses that run the mining industry.

“We have been calling for justice for a long time,” Santiago said. “And we need those responsible for this to be caught and punished.”