AP Further Documents Evidence of Honduran Police Death Squads; U.S. State Department Hits Back

[Catherina]

AP Further Documents Evidence of Honduran Police Death Squads; U.S. State Department Hits Back

Written by Dan Beeton
Tuesday, 14 May 2013 16:40

A new investigative feature by award-winning Associated Press correspondent Alberto Arce probes deeper into recurring police death squad activity in Honduras. Following up on his reports in March, Arce details the cases of several gang suspects who have disappeared after being taken into police custody, as well as what witnesses have described as the gunning-down, in cold blood, of suspects in the streets. The article reveals that:

At least five times in the last few months, members of a Honduras street gang were killed or went missing just after run-ins with the U.S.-supported national police, The Associated Press has determined, feeding accusations that they were victims of federal death squads.
…

In March, two mothers discovered the bodies of their sons after the men had called in a panic to say they were surrounded by armed, masked police. The young men, both members of the 18th Street gang, had been shot in the head, their hands bound so tightly the cords cut to the bone.

That was shortly after three members of 18th Street were detained by armed, masked men and taken to a police station. Two men with no criminal history were released, but their friend disappeared without any record of his detention.

A month after the AP reported that an 18th Street gang leader and his girlfriend vanished from police custody, they are still missing.

As we have previously examined, Arce has noted that U.S. support for the Honduran National Police while some officers engage in death squad activity would seem to violate the Leahy Law. Rather than proceed with greater caution or reexamine ongoing policy, the U.S. State Department has responded defensively. Arce quotes Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs William Brownfield as saying

“The option is that if we don’t work with the police, we have to work with the armed forces, which almost everyone accepts to be worse than the police in terms of the mission of policing, or communities take matters in their own hands. In other words, the law of the jungle, in which there are no police and where every citizen is armed and ready to mete out justice,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield said in Spanish during a March 28 video chat.*

Brownfield has taken a PR offensive to the Honduran and Latin American press as well. But there, rather than describe the U.S.’ Honduran police partners as police partners as an “evil” a sort of lesser evil, an EFE article yesterday reports that Brownfield said that he “respects” and “admires” the “effective work” that notorious Police Director Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla has done, and that

"I want to make it very clear that I am working with the Honduran police, and supplying aid through programs, because everyone in Honduras agrees that they are suffering a problem of violence, homicides, and drug trafficking. And to solve them we have to work with the police,” he concluded.

The comments represent a doubling-down by the State Department in the face of growing congressional pressure and concern about human rights violations committed by Honduran police and other authorities. While Brownfield -- who has been the State Department’s point person regarding the Bonilla controversy -- has previously defended ongoing U.S. support to the Honduran police, neither he nor anyone else at State seems to have previously been willing to praise Bonilla while members of Congress point fingers at him regarding past and current death squad activity.

In another sign of doubling-down and lashing back, Brownfield also dismissed what he described as “some groups’” claims regarding Bonilla and other suspect cops: “I haven't seen that any conclusion has been reached that supports the accusations of some groups about the history of the leadership of the Honduran police,” and he reiterated his misleading claim that some Honduran police units are not under Bonilla’s control:

"As a precaution, we are working with those parts of the police that do not report directly to the director general. But I understand that he has taken steps to purge the corrupt members of the police and to professionalize it, and he has been effective in delivering a better police force to the community and streets of Honduras,” he affirmed.

While Honduran officials have previously denounced statements by “groups” and individuals regarding rights violations and corruption in Honduras, it seems to be a departure from recent practice for the U.S. State Department to do so. And as we have previously noted, Bonilla’s activities a decade ago were at the time cause for great concern from the State Department. A 2003 cable made available by Wikileaks reveals that then-Western Hemisphere Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Fisk had urged Honduran authorities “to send a strong signal about impunity by arresting fugitive policeman Juan Carlos “Tiger” Bonilla.”

While Bonilla did go to trial for murder charges in one case and was found innocent (when the prosecutor quit mid-trial), Bonilla was suspected in over a dozen others. The head of the police internal affairs department at the time, Maria Luisa Borjas claimed that her investigation was obstructed by authorities and that she received death threats.

Part of Brownfield’s PR counter-offensive focuses on aerial operations, citing this as an area in which Leahy Law restrictions were hampering police counternarcotics operations:

Brownfield assured today that the restrictions that come from the US Congress are applied fundamentally to “the country's aviation program.”

“That is due to issues that are outside the question of the national police,” he underscored. “We are in the process of resolving this issue, and if we can resolve it we will be able to supply more aid to aviation for the Honduran national police for its security operations in isolated areas of the country,” he added.

(Coincidentally, Honduran armed forces chief, general René Osorio Canales, gave an interview to Honduras’ La Tribuna newspaper today in which he described in detail areas in which he says the air force has a need for upgraded planes and helicopters.)

Various Honduras observers and authorities in Honduras have described the involvement of the Honduran police and other authorities in the drug trade.

The Honduran National Police, meanwhile, have predictably also reacted defensively to the report. Arce reports:

Honduran National Police spokesman Julian Hernandez Reyes denied the existence of police units operating outside the law. He asserted that the two gangs are murdering each other while disguised as law enforcement.

"There are no police death squads in Honduras," Hernandez said in an interview. "The only squads in place are made of police officers who give their lives for public safety."

But while Hernandez claims it is gangs dressed as cops who are committing the murders, Arce notes that plain clothes officers may also be gunning down suspects.

* May 20, 2013: This quotation, and the sentence that follows, have been changed to reflect a correction made to the original Associated Press article.

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http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/ap-further-documents-evidence-of-honduran-police-death-squads-us-state-department-hits-back

[ocpagu]

1. Death squads are a plague in Latin America.

Certainly one of the worst among the "legacies" of the Cold War dictatorships in the continent, as well as the militarization of the police forces, and the training several of them received from the U.S. School of Assassins.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Good grief! After reading the article I thought I should try to find a photo

of "El Tigre" Bonilla. I expect this death squad lunatic to look "out there," but never expected him to be THIS much like a monster.

[center]









Oh, come ON, sir! Stop screwing around.[/center]

[Judi Lynn]

4. More images:

[center]



"El Tigre" gets more trinkets
from "El Bobo" "el Lobo."
Distinguished employee of the US/Honduran oligarchy.

[Catherina]

14. I hope I don't have nightmares tonight. Yuck. n/t

[bvar22]

3. The same thing is going on in Colombia with "Labor Organizers".

The USA is following a very stupid and shortsighted Foreign Policy in Latin America
by supporting the few remaining Right Wing Puppet Governments
against the will of the vast majority of the population of Latin America.

You would think that a country that pays so much Lip Service to words like "Democracy" and "Freedom" and "Will of the People" would be more supportive of the REAL thing.
But NO.

It is difficult to find policy on which the Republicans and Democratic Party leadership absolutely agree, but Latin America is one.
The two Parties (Democratic & Republican) both agree that the emerging Democracies must be Demoinzed & Condemned,
while the remaining Right Wing Death Squad Police States will be supported and financed with US Taxpayer Dollars.
Colombia now has a Brand new "Free Trade" Agreement thanks to the Obama Administration.

We are blindly driving an entire continent into the arms of China and Russia
and losing these emerging markets to American products.
There WILL be Blowback,
and it WILL be the fault of our current national leadership.=

Few things disgust me more that the bi-partisan condemnation of the emerging Democracies in Latin America, and the continued support for the remaining Right Wing Death Squad Oligarchies.
(Hillary and John Kerry are some of the WORST offenders.)

VIVA Democracy!
I pray we get some here soon!

[Catherina]

13. "We are blindly driving an entire continent into the arms of China and Russia "

I agree. Countries all over LatAm are signing huge deals with China and Russia. I have nothing against the Chinese or the Russians but hot damn, we could be making those deals. We could be working with those countries and forming solid, lasting bonds based on mutual respect, for our mutual benefit. And Obama is doing the US no favors because what he proved to them is that it doesn't matter how friendly the face in the Oval Office, our system is the problem. For a while there, there was hope that finally something might change and that with a *better man* in the Presidency, Latin America and the US could start afresh. Instead it's been the same old, same old. I don't see us getting this chance again, not for a long time.

[bvar22]

16. "For a while there, there was hope....

.... that finally something might change..."
I couldn't agree more.

[font size=5]Obama's Army for CHANGE, Jan. 21, 2009[/font]

[font size=5]"Oh, What could have been."[/font]


Opportunities like we had in 2008 come only once in a generation.
This opportunity was squandered seeking incremental improvement and Republican Approval.



You will know them by their WORKS.

[Catherina]

17. Another reply to you

here: CELAC doctrine of peace and justice articulated against US policy

[byeya]

5. When the elected president of Honduras was overthrown he was taken to a US military base

en route to exile.
Death squads are American as apple pie; where the USA takes over with a puppet dictator, atrocities follow. 0bama, H. Clinton
playing the same old imperialistic game.
I hope the new Latin American/Carib. associations, w/o the USA & Canada, will continue to move farther from the meddlings of this country.

[Catherina]

10. Timely post

I was just watching this and wanting to scream. The game never changes. Chavez said there were US military officers on the base where he was taken. Aristide, same thing.

The US has enough problems at home and needs to take care of those. Quit meddling in other countries affairs. We haven't helped in over a century and the zebra can never change its stripes.

Stay home. Quit meddling. Apologies decades later are worthless.
This applies not just to the US but to all the old colonial powers who are having some sort of a reconquering revival right now. The apologies are no good. Stop messing with other country's economic systems because capitalism needs to exploit labor and resources to survive. Those resources don't belong to us. Stop creating and then exploiting cheaper labor. Stop trying to herd people into factories for cheap goods and quick profit. Love would be never having to make false apologies.

"Haiti offers a marvelous opportunity for American investment." reported *Financial America* in 1926. "The run-of-the-mill Haitian is handy, easily directed and gives a hard day's labor for 20 cents, while in Panama the same day's work costs (US)$3."

In what alternate universe did Clinton think destroying Haiti's rice agriculture was a *helpful* thing? In what alternate universe?

[Bacchus4.0]

12. nope, Z was taken to a Honduran base

the US leases a portion of the base. Just like in Ecuador until 2009 when Ecuador did not renew the base. The base in Manta remains an Ecuadorian military base.

[naaman fletcher]

15. we've seen this same lie

at least 100 times now, and it never stops.

At least the "open source" VZLA election code canard seems to have been discarded.

[WillyT]

6. K & R !!!

[Catherina]

7. Yo WillyT!

It's great to see you down here old pal. Sending you major hugs

[WillyT]

8. Right Back Atcha, Catherina !!!

[grahamhgreen]

9. Lets fix our country before we screw up others.

[Catherina]

11. You'd think that was a no-brainer n/t