President Xiomara Castro has called off the extradition treaty with U.S. authorities.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro denounced on Tuesday an ongoing “coup of state,”amid controversy over his decision to cancel the extradition treaty with the United States, which allowed the imprisonment of powerful drug traffickers.
“I confirm that the peace and internal security of the Republic are at risk … because of a new coup d’état that the people must stop,” said the leftist president on radio and television.Hours after a video was published showing her brother-in-law at a meeting with drug traffickers in 2013 asking for input for her election campaign that year.
Castro ended the treaty with the United States,arguing that he sought to prevent Washington from using it against military personnel loyal to him and facilitate an attempted coup.
However, the opposition claimed Castro canceled the treaty,that allowed half a hundred Honduran drug traffickers to be imprisoned, including a former right-wing president, to protect members of his government and his family.
On Saturday, a brother-in-law and nephew of the president resigned: the secretary of Congress, Congressman Carlos Zelaya, after admitting to the prosecutor’s office that he met with drug traffickers in 2013, and his son, the Minister of Defense, José Manuel Zelaya.
On Tuesday, a specialized portal published a video of that meeting.
An exclusive InSight Crime video shows Honduran drug dealers offering bribes to a member of the presidential family. This shows the seriousness of narcocorruption in the country,” said the portal on network X.
“Plan in motion”
“In relation to the video … I condemn all kinds of negotiations between drug traffickers and politicians,” Castro said in his message to the country on Tuesday night.
“The plan to destroymy socialist, democratic government, and the next electoral process are underway,” he added.
He then gave the floor to his Minister of Security, Gustavo Sánchez, who read a list of drug trafficking judicial cases involving right-wing politicians.
The right-wing National Party (PN) said after the cancellation of the treaty that the Honduran government sought to “block the Zelaya Castro Sarmiento family from criminal prosecution by the United States prosecution.”
The PN is one of Honduras’ traditional parties whose former leader, former President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), was one of the 50 Hondurans extradited since 2014 to the United States, where he was sentenced last June to 45 years in prison for drug and arms trafficking.
US embassy denies closure
In the midst of the controversy over the end of the treaty,The U.S. embassy in Honduras denied Tuesday that it will close.
“Fake news about an alleged closure of U.S. Embassy operations in Honduras are closed. We want to clarify that this is not true,” the diplomatic mission published in X.
“The Embassy continues and will continue to operate normally,” he added.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo