T

he Berta Cáceres murder trial has gotten off to a slow start this week as the tribunal has had to resolve issues surrounding the admission of evidence that includes telephone data, laptop and USB drives, and financial records of the suspects’ bank accounts that show significant deposits after the murder.

On Monday, October 22, private defense attorneys of the eight murder suspects requested that the telephone evidence presented by the public prosecutors be thrown out questioning the legality of the method used to collect the evidence. The tribunal, however, had already submitted the evidence and therefore denied the requests.

The trial continued on the morning of October 23, when the defense attorneys representing former DESA biological engineer Sergio Rodríguez claimed that the telephone evidence presented by the public prosecutors was analyzed and accepted by the incorrect court earlier in the process. The tribunal admitted the evidence Wednesday October 24 resolving to wait until the sentencing to decide on its legality.

Meanwhile, they requested that the Rodríguez’s defense attorneys present reports analyzing information from Cáceres’s laptop and USB drives allegedly related to the suspects. The public prosecutors have challenged the relevance of information given that Cáceres could not have anticipated the role of the suspects in her murder. The evidence was rejected for lack of at translation in Spanish, despite that a translator had been sworn in and was available to the defense.