Honduras mayor arrested for masterminding environmentalist’s killing

Adan Funez was one of three men arrested this week over alleged involvement in the shooting of activist Juan Lopez.Honduran authorities have arrested three people, including a powerful politician, accused of plotting the 2024 assassination of an environmental leader, an incident that became a symbol of government corruption.Adan Funez, former mayor of the city of Tocoa, was captured at his home on Tuesday on suspicion of masterminding the killing of Juan Lopez, following years of accusations by religious and environmental leaders.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Conservative lawmaker in Honduras injured after being hit with explosivelist 2 of 3Trump hosts Honduras’s new president Asfura at Mar-a-Lago in USlist 3 of 3Press freedom declines in Americas, with US seeing sharpest drop: Reportend of listLopez was an anticorruption crusader who led a community effort against an iron oxide mining project in Colon, a rural region of northwestern Honduras, which activists said endangered the area’s dense jungles and crystalline waters, including protected reserve areas.Lopez was one of the fiercest critics of Funez, a local mayor at the time, a supporter of the mine and a close ally of Honduras’s former president, Xiomara Castro, whose term ended this year.In September 2024, Lopez called on Funez 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, fuelling demands for justice from Pope Francis, the United Nations and the then-administration of United States President Joe Biden.Accusations also emerged against Funez, 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 Caceres.Funez’s arrest on Tuesday comes more than a year after Lopez’s assassination.