Honduran President Xiomara Castro. Photo: Archive.
“It is essential to dismantle the criminal organization that remains active and was established by the leaders convicted abroad,” said Xiomara Castro, president of Honduras, on Friday.
President Castro noted that the guilty verdict reached in the case against former president Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) in the US on three charges related to drug trafficking and weapons shows the complicity of the judicial system with organized crime. President Castro emphasized that her government seeks “justice, not revenge.”
“The failure of the Honduran Justice System and its complicity with organized crime has been exposed and its impunity fully demonstrated, just as we have publicly denounced for many years from the resistance and before the international community which, in large part… provided support to the drug dictatorship,” President Castro stated.
This Friday, a US jury upheld three charges of drug trafficking and use of weapons for purposes related to drug trafficking, which represents the most unfavorable conviction possible for the former ruler of Honduras. Now, Judge Kevin Castel will determine sentencing; this could include several life sentences for Hernández, a long-time ally of the US.
🚨ATENCIÓN || La presidenta de la República @XiomaraCastroZ se pronuncia oficialmente sobre la condena de Juan Orlando Hernández. pic.twitter.com/0u4Os9hThP
— SecretarĂa de Prensa de Honduras (@gobprensaHN) March 9, 2024
“Today, it is once again proven that those who seized power on June 28, 2009, abducted the state in complicity with the judicial system to commit crimes and subject the people to illegitimate elections with repression in November 2009,” said President Castro. “And with blood and fire, they attacked us with fraudulent elections processes in 2013 and 2017, supported by the European Union and the United States.”
Castro noted that Honduras’ the popular resistance movements yearn for “justice and honors the spirit of our fallen martyrs during 12 years and seven months of struggle in the streets until the defeat of the dictatorship was achieved.”
“This gangster elite that seized power along with their accomplices must pay for their crimes, be investigated and tried without the obstacles they use to entangle or bureaucratize justice,” she said.
“The people know that they [former President Hernández and the criminal elite] assaulted power with weapons,” said President Castro. “They killed, trafficked, they bribed, and from there, businessmen and politicians approved onerous contracts and concessions, and they referred to that as the rule of law, legal security, and the principle of legality. They laundered money and got rich illicitly using the state. Most of these crimes go unpunished.”
The government of Honduras has “responsibly assumed the national restructuring program, the promotion of democracy and the integration of the powers of the State, despite strong opposition and unfounded criticism,” said President Castro in relation to the election of leaders of Congress, Parliament, the Supreme Court of Justice, and the Public Ministry.
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Castro asked the Public Ministry and the courts to act “with total independence against the criminals who betrayed the country by selling our territory to the Employment and Development Zones (ZEDES), against those who broke the constitutional order [and] perpetrated murders without legal consequences. They committed robberies, trafficked drugs, and issued an illegal ruling on the re-election of Juan Orlando, without receiving any punishment.”
“The enemies of the people who previously applauded him are hiding and continue unpunished by the condemnation that weighs on them,” said President Castro. “We have to learn to identify them.”
A group of Hondurans took to the streets of Tegucigalpa on Friday to celebrate the guilty verdict against Hernández.
“There are many people who are celebrating… When they beat us, they took us to prison, they attacked us several times by order of Juan Orlando Hernández,” said Miguel Briceño, a member of the Indignant Opposition movement, told the journalist.
Although the imperialist and hegemonic media is attempting to portray the US as the savior of Honduras and the voice for law and order, as usual, this attempt only serves to mask the nefarious role that the US played in the overthrow of Honduras’ democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 and its backing of the criminal dictatorship until Castro’s electoral victory in late 2021.
“It has been the Southern District of New York that has been independently following these cases, building the case, that have led to Juan Orlando Hernández and, before that, his brother Tony,” noted US-based academic Dana Frank in a recent interview. “And the evidence that I know is that the US, the White House, and the State Department have not been happy about this.”
“It is also clear that although Obama and Trump and Biden all supported Juan Orlando Hernández, Biden did not want the Southern District of New York to charge and extradite Juan Orlando Hernández until after Hernández was out of office,” Frank added.
“There is a narrative here that you could see in The New York Times, for example, that the Honduran people can’t govern themselves, and then, suddenly, the US is coming in and heroically imposing the rule of law,” continued Frank. “And it is the opposite. It is the United States that helped destroy the criminal justice system in Honduras, and Obama and Trump did not want Juan Orlando to be charged and extradited.”
(TeleSUR)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
