Honduras President Selective When Targeting Criminal Crackdowns
Written by Parker Asmann - FEBRUARY 27, 2019
While he cracks down on gangs, the president of Honduras has largely ignored drug trafficking charges leveled at his family members and officials within his governing party, raising questions about his desire to take on corruption that implicates his inner circle.
Beginning in late January, President Juan Orlando Hernández sent military and national police into the streets to take on gangs like the MS13. Amid this show of force, Hernández said that the Central American nation needed to increase the presence of its security forces, including elite units.
In addition, Hernández is pushing to create a remote maximum security prison with no satellite communication, saying that the country’s current prisons are “insufficient for so many captured criminals,” La Prensa reported.
The president’s focus on hard-line security measures and combating the gangs comes shortly after federal US prosecutors accused two Honduran mayors of importing “massive quantities of cocaine” into the United States and using “heavy weaponry” like machine guns to protect drug shipments while working with other traffickers in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Prosecutors say Amílcar Alexander Ardón Soriano, the former mayor of El Paraíso in Honduras’ western Copán department along the border with Guatemala, had access to at least one cocaine laboratory and a clandestine air strip.
He “leveraged his power by charging a per-kilogram tax” on cocaine shipments transported by other traffickers through the area under his control, according to the indictment. Ardón Soriano also allegedly used some of his drug revenues to “fund political campaigns in Honduras” for himself and other associates.
More:
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/honduras-president-eyes-hardline-security-criminal-links-mount/