(PROBIDAD/IFEX) – Honduran lawyer Dionisio García, aged 43, was murdered on the morning of 4 December 2006 by two hit-men on a motorcycle as he headed toward the Supreme Court. He died instantly of gunshot wounds. García was a lawyer for the Association for a More Just Society (Asociación por una Sociedad Más Justa, ASJ). […]
(PROBIDAD/IFEX) – Honduran lawyer Dionisio García, aged 43, was murdered on the morning of 4 December 2006 by two hit-men on a motorcycle as he headed toward the Supreme Court. He died instantly of gunshot wounds. García was a lawyer for the Association for a More Just Society (Asociación por una Sociedad Más Justa, ASJ).
Together with Robert Marín García and Dina Meza, Dionisio García was part of ASJ’s journalistic research team, which was investigating the improper practices of private security companies. Marín García and Meza had been threatened in recent months in relation to this work.
Dionisio García, who was married with a seven-year-old child, was legally representing security guards who were being mistreated by their private employers.
“We are shocked, enraged, pained and indignant because Dionisio was a great lawyer, a great person and very honest and honourable in his work. He would gladly help people without charging. We called him ‘the lawyer of the poor’,” stated Marín García.
ASJ has been investigating the operations of private security companies for a number of months, and has revealed various improprieties in their operations, including violations of labour laws. Dionisio García and the ASJ journalistic team recently informed a government official of their findings.
Legal actions were taken against ASJ’s journalists as a result of this work. While these actions were unsuccessful, the journalists continued to face anonymous threats and other forms of harassment, including death threats sent via e-mail.
Dionisio García himself received just such a death threat in mid-November, which led him to file a formal complaint with the human rights organisation Comité de Familiares Detenidos-Desaparecidos en Honduras (Cofadeh).
Outraged at Dionisio García’s murder, Meza has publicly accused Richard Swasey, the main stockholder of the security companies Delta Segurity and Setech, as well as their main manager, Róger Medina López, and the companies’ main detective, Carlos Aguilar – “he is in charge of following the journalists and other staff of ASJ”, says Meza – of responsibility for the crime.
“What happened to Dionisio is frightening and painful; we have all been threatened by people from Setech. The harassment to which we have been subjected has even been brought to the attention of the Human Rights Prosecutor (Fiscalía de Derechos Humanos), but nobody does anything – no one seems to care,” said Marín García.
BACKGROUND:
The murder of Dionisio García is the first of its kind to occur in Honduras in the last three decades. It occurred one month after the third anniversary of the murder of the journalist Germán Rivas Morales in Santa Rosa de Copán. No one has been prosecuted for that crime.
The murder takes place at a time when threats to the exercise of the right of freedom of expression on the increase, as defamation cases proliferate, especially in cases involving the issues of corruption and organised crime.
This alert was prepared by PROBIDAD with information provided by the Committee for Free Expression (Comité por la Libre Expresión, C-Libre).
