PBI-Honduras accompanies COFADEH at trial of police officer accused in the murder of Keyla Martinez

On October 1, PBI-Honduras posted:

“PBI accompanies Cofadeh [Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras] in the trial against policeman Jarol Perdomo, accused of the death of Keyla Martínez. The process had entered a recess since September 29, 2022, due to the pending amparo appeal, filed by the private prosecution, to modify the simple homicide figure to aggravated femicide. Yesterday the parties announced the conclusions of the case.

The lawyer Karol Cárdenas, who is part of the private prosecution in the case, together with the lawyer Dora Oliva, requested that ‘the Public Ministry be urged to open an investigation process against all the police officers who helped Jarol Perdomo, to modify or hide the scene of the crime and they failed in the duty of the officials, because what was appropriate at that time was to put them at the order of the Public Ministry and take care of the scene of the crime.’

20 months after the murder of Keyla Martínez in the custody of the National Police, we remember the importance of clarifying the facts and we want to highlight the tireless struggle of her family in the search for justice.”

Keyla Martinez, a 26-year-old nursing student, was murdered on February 7, 2021, while in police custody. She had been detained by police around 11:45 pm because of a curfew when returning home after eating with friends on a Saturday evening. There were more than 13 police officers on duty at the police station when she was killed.

Criterio.hn also reports:

“After 20 months demanding justice, with the slogan ‘Hope is missing a girl: Keyla’, relatives, women’s and feminist organizations, gathered in front of the Sentencing Court of Siguatepeque, to know the breakdown of conclusions against the only one implicated by the Honduran justice in the murder of the young Keyla Martínez, killed during a pandemic-imposed curfew in February 2021.

Beginning at 10:00 in the morning, the Sentencing Court of Siguatepeque, Comayagua, in the center of the country, announced the beginning of the stage of reading the conclusions of the oral and public trial in the judicial case against the policeman Jarol Rolando Perdomo Sarmiento, the only agent who has been brought before the courts for the murder of Keyla Patricia Martínez Rodríguez.

‘[Keyla] was illegally captured and was supposedly under the protection of them [the police], but they ended up murdering her committing the crime of femicide. All the people and witnesses know that there was not only one perpetrator, there were accomplices, even the head of that region is involved, according to witnesses, he covers up this type of facts,’ said Ana Ruth García [coordinator of Ecumenical for the Right to Decide].

Jarol was accused by the Public Ministry (MP) of aggravated femicide, but the court of La Esperanza, Intibucá, was responsible for typifying the crime as simple homicide.

The courts must [still] rule on the requirement typified in the appeal, filed with the Court of Appeals of Comayagua, to change crime to aggravated femicide but not as simple homicide.

For now, the Court that hears the case enters the stage of deliberation, a process in which the evidence presented during the development of the Oral and Public Trial will be evaluated, thus determining whether the policeman is guilty or innocent of the murder of Keyla.”

Between 2016 and 2021, there were 2,264 cases of femicide in Honduras.

In the past five years, 381 women have been killed on average annually. Ninety-six per cent of the murders remain unsolved.

We continue to follow this.

On February 8, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “One year after the violent death of Keyla Martínez in the custody of the National Police, PBI accompanied @RedDefensoras [National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders] in an act in memory of Keyla. From PBI, we remember the importance of clarifying Keyla’s femicide.”