Lindsay Fendt/The Tico Times-: March
29, 6:14 p.m.
LIMÓN — A Limón court delivered guilty
verdicts for four of seven defendants in the 2013 killing of sea turtle
conservationist Jairo Mora and the kidnapping and robbery of four foreign
volunteers. The same defendants were acquitted in a previous trial last year, but the verdict was
overturned on appeal.
Héctor Cash, Ernesto Centeno, José Bryan
Quesada and Donald Salmón were found guilty; Donald’s brother Darwin Salmón,
Felipe Arauz and William Delgado were cleared of all charges. All seven
defendants were acquitted on charges of sexual assault against one of the
female volunteers captured with Mora because prosecutors were unable to prove
which of the defendants had committed the assault.
The four men found guilty on Tuesday
received sentences ranging from 74 to 90 years for both the crimes on the night
of Mora’s murder and another rape and robbery that was tried at the same time.
Each of those defendants will serve 50 years in prison, the maximum
allowed by Costa Rican law.
In an explanation of the ruling that
lasted more than two hours, the court’s panel of three judges highlighted
Mora’s work with sea turtles as the primary motivation for his murder.
“The court rejects that there is any
other motive for this murder,” said Carlos Álvarez, the trial’s chief judge.
“The killing of Mr. Jairo Mora Sandoval was the straw that broke the camel’s
back in this war that was taking place between poachers and environmentalists
on the beach.”
At the time of his death, Mora was
working as a sea turtle monitor for the conservation group Widecast, now
renamed LAST, on the crime-ridden Moín
Beach
Despite receiving numerous threats from poachers, Mora and four foreign female volunteers
headed to the beach on the night of May 30, 2013 in hopes of catching a glimpse
of a leatherback sea turtle. On their way back to the rescue center where they
worked, their car was overtaken by a group of men in masks.
The attackers beat Mora and threw
him in the trunk of the conservationists’ car before taking the women to
an abandoned house and sexually assaulting at least one of them. The men then
took Mora to the beach where they stripped him, beat him and dragged him behind
a car in the sand.
Judges said witness testimony from Almudena Amador, a Spanish
veterinarian kidnapped with Mora, and the victims of the previous rape and
robbery provided consistent physical descriptions of each of the accused men
along with each of their roles within the gang. Recorded phone calls, text
messages and a cell tower investigation also placed each of the men on the
beach at the time of the murder.
Though the phone evidence also placed
Arauz and Delgado on the beach the night of the murder, judges said they could
not convict based on a lack of witness testimony describing them participating
in the crimes.
Weeks before the verdict, prosecutors
had dropped charges against Darwin Salmón due to a lack of
evidence.
“The phone evidence showed that they
communicated with the other suspects, but it didn’t prove that they
participated in the murder,” Álvarez said.
In his closing remarks regarding the
judges’ decision to give the defendants the maximum penalty for murder, 35
years, Álvarez again looked to Mora’s work with turtles as a critical factor.
“Jairo was someone dedicated to the
environment,” Álvarez said. “This crime is more than just a horrible murder, it
has also damaged Costa Rica
Following the verdict, Arauz folded his
hands and began to pray, Centeno put his head in his hands while the other
convicted defendants wore blank stares.
On the other side of the courtroom,
Mora’s parents, Fernanda Sandoval and Rafael Mora, began to cry.
“All that we wanted was for this crime to
not go unpunished,” said Rodrigo Araya, the Mora family lawyer. “I believe this
verdict can bring some peace to Jairo, to all of Costa Rican society and to
environmentalists everywhere.”
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