August 31, 2024, 9:32 PM
August 31, 2024, 9:32 PM
Honduras’ defense minister and his father, a lawmaker who are President Xiomara Castro’s nephew and brother-in-law, resigned Saturday amid a scandal over alleged links to drug trafficking, three days after the president cancelled the extradition treaty with the United States.
Congress Secretary Carlos Zelaya, who is the brother of former President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband who was overthrown in a 2009 coup, announced his resignation to face an investigation into ties to drug traffickers.
“I am going to present my resignation from the National Congress as a deputy and as secretary of Congress to strip myself of any kind of protection I may have and to be investigated,” the deputy told reporters.
Shortly afterwards, his son, José Manuel Zelaya, resigned from his post as head of the Ministry of Defense.
“In order for the investigation to be carried out freely, I have submitted my resignation as Minister of Defense to the President,” the senior official wrote on the social network X, highlighting his father’s “integrity and honor.”
After giving his statement to the prosecutor’s office, Carlos Zelaya said he had fallen “into a trap” by admitting that in 2013 he had participated in a meeting with a well-known Honduran drug trafficker and offered “a contribution to the electoral campaign” of the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre).
“That meeting never had the approval of President Zelaya, it never had the approval or support, much less knowledge of that meeting, nor President Castro, it was a unilateral meeting on my part,” he said outside the Technical Agency for Criminal Investigation, in Comayagüela, a city next to Tegucigalpa.
Treaty cancelled
His statement to prosecutors and the press came three days after Castro announced the cancellation of the extradition treaty with the United States, which allowed the imprisonment and sending to that country of 50 Hondurans linked to drug trafficking, among them powerful politicians.
The next day, he said he did so to prevent the United States from using him against military personnel loyal to it and facilitating an attempted coup.
“A plan is being hatched against my government,” the president said Thursday, implicitly referring to the United States.
The cancellation of the treaty with Washington suggests that Honduran government officials are “linked” to drugs, sociologist Pablo Carías told AFP on Friday.
Castro made his decision in response to the “interference” of the United States ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, who criticized a meeting between Minister Zelaya and the head of the Armed Forces, General Roosevelt Hernández, with the head of Defense of Venezuela, General Vladimir Padrino López.
“Sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela,” Dogu criticized.
Mentioned in New York trial
Carlos Zelaya was mentioned last March in the trial in New York in which former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years for drug trafficking.
“If tomorrow the United States government believes it has sufficient data or evidence to bring a case against me, I can present myself before the American justice system tomorrow,” added Congressman Zelaya.
Honduran Attorney General Johel Zelaya, who took office last November, sent a team to listen in on the hearings in Hernandez’s trial in New York and to investigate any Hondurans who were mentioned.
“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 by deputy Zelaya.
Last August, the official announced that he would call to testify some 36 people who were mentioned in the case, one of them Carlos Zelaya.
