Justice Denied Once Again for Jose Isabel Morales

Trujillo Court Refuses to Release Jose Isabel Morales Pending His New Trial

6:07pm - January 6, 2014
Radio Progreso has just reported that the court in Trujillo, Colon (Tribunal de Sentencia) has denied liberty to "Chabelo" Morales pending his new trial. The radio station reporter was with Chabelo's distraught family and other members of the region's campesino organizations and social justice movement outside the court where they had been waiting all day for a decision from the court in the face of the Suprement Court ruling that his original trial can't stand and he must be given a new trial. The Supreme Court also ruled that he should be free pending retrial but the power to make that decision was then given back to the regional court where the most powerful landowners in Honduras have declared war on the campesinos. Radio Progreso reported that Chabelo was being transported to La Ceiba to await his new trial in the prison there.

Chabelo is a member of the Campesino Movement of Aguan (MCA) and of the Central Nacional de los Trabajadores del Campo (CNTC). The CNTC currently has more than 3000 members who are either charged, detained or imprisoned on charges related to the agrarian conflict in a country in which most of the population is rural, living in extreme poverty, and without the land or resources to survive while a handful of the biggest landowners and agribusiness companies control most of the land, the courts, and the power.
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