9 community, for the work carried out in defense of the land; some have been criminally tried; there are arrest warrants against members of the CODETT. Five community leaders and a minor involved in movements of fights for lands have died. The witness attributes the arrest of Mr. López Álvarez to the fight for the defense of the land. c) Juan Edgardo García, resident of the Garifuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz He has known Mr. Alfredo López Álvarez for sixteen years, and in that time he has become aware of anonymous threats against him. He pointed out an incident that occurred nine years ago: he found out that they tried to kill Mr. López Álvarez, but the perpetrators got confused and shot a person traveling in a car the same as that of Mr. López Álvarez. d) Andrés Pavón Murillo, President of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (hereinafter “CODEH”) He met Mr. Alfredo López Álvarez when he was the leader of the Garifuna community and he later became aware that he had been deprived of his liberty under “non transparent” conditions. In the year 2001 a technical team of the CODEH visited the prison of Tela to carry out a workshop on inmates’ human rights. In that meeting they achieved the organization of the individuals deprived of liberty and Mr. López Álvarez was appointed a directing member of the organization. For his participation in this organization, Mr. López Álvarez was the object of harassment and persecution, up to the point where he was prohibited from communicating in his own language. He was later transferred to the prison of Puerto Cortés, away from his family. He was warned that he would be submitted to cruel treatments if he were to participate again in the organization of the detainees. 2) Proposed by the representatives a) Gilberto Antonio Sánchez Chandías, former Assistant and Special Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Ethnic Groups and Cultural Heritage In his condition of Special Prosecutor he received complaints of all nature, among them those related to the premeditated murder of leaders that fought for land. The complaints were presented before the competent authorities, but the material perpetrators were generally charged with very weak technical investigations, reason for which they were released and the intellectual perpetrators remained completely unpunished. When the investigations reached people of “social[,] economic, and political layers of the sector”, they filed a complaint against the agents before their bosses and campaigns to discredit the institutions involved were created. The witness stated that the language normally used in the complaints is Spanish; the administrators of justice do not speak the languages of the Indian communities. Mr. Sánchez Chandías also stated that in the prisons and the centers of public detention Indians and Afro-Americans are beaten when they speak in their own language, because it is assumed that they are up to something; they are recommended to speak in Spanish. Mistreatments in the detention centers are common for prisoners and they are of public knowledge. 3) Proposed by the State