Critics decry ‘politically motivated’ decision to revisit civil war-era charges against leaders of anti-mining campaign

Five Salvadorian environmental defenders who were exonerated of bogus civil war charges will face retrial this week amid growing evidence of political interference.

Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, were acquitted in October over the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The court in Cabañas in northern El Salvador ruled that the state had failed to prove a crime had taken place, or that the defendants, former leftwing guerrilla fighters, were linked to any wrongdoing.