Honduran lawmaker faces defamation trial after naming names

FREDDY CUEVAS and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
,Associated Press•January 28, 2019

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Days before Honduras' elections in 2017, a former high-ranking official in the national police, Maria Luisa Borjas, held a news conference at which she read from government investigative reports about three high-profile killings.

Now, as an opposition lawmaker, she faces the possibility of a fine and, more significantly, the loss of her seat in Congress when she goes on trial Monday charged with defamation. Her alleged crime was essentially naming names — the suspected "intellectual authors" of a slaying contained in one of those reports — in a country where the powerful have long enjoyed impunity.

Honduras and other Latin American nations have been criticized by international organizations for years for their criminal defamation statutes, which are seen as powerful tools allowing elites — often lawmakers themselves — to silence critics.

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In Borjas' case, it was Camilo Atala, president of Ficohsa bank, who cried foul.

He was one of the 16 people whose names Borjas read from the security ministry's inspector general report as a suspected plotter of the killing of environmental activist Berta Caceres in 2016. The report said the suspects were identified based on collected evidence, including phone taps and recovered emails, but did not go into any detail about Atala's alleged role.

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