An Instruction Court of El Salvador released on Wednesday the lawyer Alejandro Henríquez and community leader José Ángel López after a special hearing in which they 'confessed the facts' attributed by the General Prosecutor's Office. They were accused of public disorder and aggressive resistance for participating in a peaceful demonstration, which is why they had been detained since last May. Henríquez, an environmentalist, and Pérez, an evangelical pastor, attended a special hearing where an abbreviated process took place in which 'they confessed the facts' that the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic (FGR) attributed to them, explained the defense lawyer Oswaldo Feusier in statements to the press. Both were sentenced to three years of 'compliance with behavioral rules' established by the judge in charge of the case, whose name is reserved for security reasons, and 'they will periodically appear before a prison surveillance court,' detailed Feusier, who pointed out that it was the defense that requested the abbreviated process. The lawyer stated that the decision, although positive, 'leaves us with a deep and clear aftertaste because it is a situation in which they have been released by applying a benefit thanks to the existence of a sentence in which they had to confess the facts they are accused of.' 'This is a situation, a reality that we cannot fight, we have to accept it, we have to make peace with it, and that is ultimately small compared to what is important to us, which is that innocent people who participated in the peaceful protest were unjustly detained and have been in detention until this date,' he commented. Henríquez and Pérez were detained on May 13, according to various organizations, after participating in a peaceful demonstration in which they called on President Nayib Bukele for support to prevent the eviction of hundreds of peasants from a rural area of the country. On May 30, they faced the initial hearing of the criminal process against them, and on that occasion the court in charge rejected the defense's request to grant conditional release and ordered provisional detention. On October 29, in a hearing to review precautionary measures, the Salvadoran justice system decided that they should remain in detention, rejecting another request from the defense for them to continue the process in freedom. This case has been rejected by national and foreign human rights organizations, as it occurs in a context of 'criminalization' and 'detentions' against activists and critics of President Bukele's government, as denounced by various NGOs.
