Washington’s ambassador in Tegucigalpa called Venezuelan Defense Minister a drug trafficker
▲ The president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro (in file image), yesterday denounced the US interventionism.Afp Photo
AFP and Xinhua
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, August 29, 2024, p. 27
Tegucigalpa. Honduras decided yesterday to denounce the extradition treaty with the United States, under which drug lords have been imprisoned, accusing interference to the ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, on her policy towards Venezuela.
“The interference and interventionism of the United States, as well as its intention to direct the politics of Honduras through its embassy and other representatives, is intolerable. I have ordered the foreign minister @EnriqueReinaHN “denounce the extradition treaty,” President Xiomara Castro wrote on social media X.
The treaty is considered a key tool to dismantle the narco-state which, according to the US justice system, was raised in Honduras during the government of President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022).
Fifty Hondurans have been extradited to the United States since 2014 for drug trafficking under this treaty, including Hernández himself, who was sentenced in June in New York to 45 years in prison.
The Castro government is a staunch ally of Venezuela. Honduras was one of the few Latin American countries that congratulated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on his re-election on July 28.
The leftist Honduran president announced her decision to withdraw from the treaty, after the US ambassador expressed the worry from his country for a meeting held by Honduran authorities with the Venezuelan Defense Minister, General Vladimir Padrino López, sanctioned by the United States.
It was surprising for me to see the Minister of Defense (of Honduras) and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela.Dogu told reporters in Tegucigalpa.
USA attacks, ignores and violates with impunity the principles and practices of international law that promote respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, non-intervention and universal peace. Enough is enough.President Castro added.
Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya, nephew of Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya, the former president who was ousted in 2009, and the top Honduran military chief, General Roosevelt Hernandez, met last week with Padrino Lopez at the International Military Sports Council’s World Cadet Games in Venezuela.
The denunciation of the treaty caused concern in some quarters. The drug traffickers must be jumping (for joy) because he will no longer be extradited from HondurasHonduran lawyer Juan Carlos Barrientos told local station HRN.
Meanwhile, Caracas was the scene of protests by Chavistas celebrating Maduro’s election victory a month ago, and of protests condemning the president’s re-election by supporting opposition leader María Corina Machado’s accusations, without evidence, that there was fraud in the elections.