Perú Official Threatens “Legal Action” Over Honduran Tear Gas Story
Posted by Al Giordano - September 26, 2009 at 1:11 pm
By Al Giordano
http://narcosphere.narconews.com.nyud.net:8090/userfiles/policia-peru.jpgOn the website of today’s daily La República – an important newspaper in Perú – a YouTube video by Honduras’ Gremio de Cineastas (a filmmaker’s association) that we published on Narco News on Wednesday - and something we reported from that video - has now launched a national polemic in that Andean country, including a threat of “legal action” by the country’s Government Minister against those of us that reported it.
The video shows Honduran coup regime police invading the Hato de Enmedio neighborhood of Tegucigalpa shooting tear gas canisters clearly stamped, “National Police of Perú.”
This is what your servant wrote at the time:
“We can also see in that video the revelation that the tear gas canisters shot by the National Police yesterday were stamped as property of the government of Perú, suggesting strongly that Peruvian President Alan García is a participant in smuggling arms to the Honduran coup regime. Something he will now have to answer for to the Organization of American States in general, and his neighbor Brazil in particular.”
The story then got picked up by the Brazilian national newsweekly Carta Capital and then by Peruvian dailies La Primera and La República, causing the Congress of that country to launch an investigation and demand that the Government Minister appear at a hearing to testify.
La República reported the story and then asked:
How could these gases arrive in Honduras if they belong to the Peruvian police?
A little while later, after Government Minister Octavio Salazar issued his threat of "legal action," the newspaper put a line through that sentence, like this:
How could these gases arrive in Honduras if they belong to the Peruvian police?
And the newspaper's reporter added this text:
I now publish the denials by the Government Minister about tear gas bombs with the seal of the National Police of Perú used by the government of Honduras:
1. The Perú National Police have not sold, nor donated, nor delivered any kind of material in general nor tear gas bombs in particular to the government of Honduras.
2. Through corresponding channels, the Government Minister solicited official information from Honduran authorities about this matter.
3. The Honduras Security Minister, Mr. Jorge A. Rodas Gamero, has responded in writing that, “at no moment was this kind of material obtained, nor donated, nor in error, by the National Police of Perú.”
4. The Honduran official said that the tear gas materials was obtained by its government from the Honduran business “Representaciones Comercio e Inversiones (RCI),” which had obtained it from the business, “Combined Systems, Inc.” of the United States.
5. Rodas Gamero informed that, while reviewing the tear gas grenades found that “on the original wrapping was a banner with the name of the National Police of Perú, but the sale to our country was covered by another with the grenade’s specifications.”
6. The tear gas grenades mentioned with this ribbon had to do with an order that the business Combined Systems was going to send to the National Police of Perú. The contract between them was signed in August 2007. However, in October 2007, the contract we canceled by the Government Ministry due to noncompliance with the norms of public contracts. As a consequence, the PNP never received the tear gas material.
7. The Government Ministry reserves the right to initiate pertinent legal actions to preserve the image of the country and the police institution.
La República also reports:
“The Congress of the Republic has filed a motion for the Interior Minister, Octavio Salazar, to appear at a hearing and explain the presence of Peruvian tear gas bombs in the hands of the de facto government of Honduras.”
The US company, Combined Systems, Inc., that the Honduran regime says is the source of its gas grenades, is based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. Through its subsidiary website with the ironic name of less-lethal.com, it deals in chemical munitions, impact munitions, flash-bang devices and multi-effect grenades, arms launchers and other such toys, which, whether through Perú or not, seem to have no problem getting into the hands of a coup dictatorship that has fetishized chemical warfare against its own people and even a foreign embassy.
More:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3462/per%C3%BA-official-threatens-%E2%80%9Clegal-action%E2%80%9D-over-honduran-tear-gas-story
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