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The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 2, 2024, p. 30
Tegucigalpa. A lawyer was appointed yesterday as the Honduran Minister of Defense, amid a scandal over alleged links to drug trafficking that caused the resignations of a nephew and brother-in-law of President Xiomara Castro from the government and Congress, respectively.
The crisis erupted after Castro on Wednesday cancelled the extradition treaty with the United States, which allowed the imprisonment of some 50 Hondurans linked to drug trafficking, including powerful politicians, fueling suspicions that members of the leftist government were linked to drug dealers.
I want to announce the appointment of citizen Rixi Moncada to the position of Secretary of Defensea 59-year-old litigator, announced Castro in a speech during the opening ceremony of the independence celebrations.
Castro’s nephew, José Manuel Zelaya, resigned yesterday as defense minister, shortly after his father, Carlos Zelaya, resigned as a deputy and secretary of Congress after admitting that in 2013 he met with drug lords.
Moncada, who is close to the presidential family, was minister of labor and energy in the government of Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a coup in 2009.
The lawyer was sworn in hours later at the presidential house, where she declared that she assumed the position with civic and professional commitment in an institution that has essential characteristics, such as the armed forces.
Moncada, who did not comment on the scandal, is seen as a favorite to be the presidential candidate of the ruling Libre party in the 2025 elections, and condemned the interference of the US ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, on internal affairs.
The diplomat criticized the fact that Minister Zelaya and the head of the Armed Forces, General Roosevelt Hernández, had met with the Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino, sanctioned by Washington for drug trafficking.
Dogu, who attended the event headed by Castro yesterday, said that he maintains daily contact with the government Honduran.
The end of the extradition treaty It is a step that benefits no oneanalyst Roberto Herrera, former ombudsman national.
Carlos Zelaya was mentioned last March, in the trial held in New York in which former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking.
Honduras’s attorney general, Johel Zelaya, who took office last November, sent a team to listen in on Hernandez’s trial and investigate any Hondurans named in it.
We will continue our investigations; we will not rest until the truth prevails in Honduras and justice is served to the Honduran people. Whoever it may be!said the prosecutor after the statement of Congressman Zelaya.
Last month, the prosecutor – who has no family ties to the accused – announced that he would call to testify some 36 people who were mentioned in the case. One of them is Carlos Zelaya.