Honduras—Officials of the State Attorney’s Office in San Pedro Sula reported today they have identified those responsible for the murder of journalist Israel Zelaya, popularly known as “Chacatay.”

The Office’s spokesman, Elvos Guzmán, told reporters that “in the Zelaya case the investigations have made a great deal of progress, already some suspects have been identified,” among them the alleged masterminds and perpetrators of the murder.

“It only remains to determine some actions that each of them (the suspects) carried out” at the time the journalist was killed, he said.

He went on to say that the investigation had ruled out any link to political action, declaring “it had nothing to do with this.”

Zelaya was murdered on August 24 last year in San Pedro Sula. His body was found in sugar cane fields in the Villanueva neighborhood of Cortés district.

His death brought to nine the number of journalists murdered in Honduras to that date.

On December 28 Honduran journalist Henry Suazo, correspondent of the Tegucigalpa radio station HRN in the Caribbean coastal town of La Masica, was shot to death by unidentified assailants, becoming the tenth newsman to be killed in 2010.