(Tegucigalpa) Honduran leftist President Xiomara Castro announced Thursday that she has canceled the extradition treaty with the United States to prevent it from being used against military personnel loyal to her and facilitating an attempted coup.
“A plot is being hatched against my government,” she said, implicitly referring to the United States.
The day before, she had denounced this treaty, a key instrument in the fight against international drug trafficking, affirming that “the interference and interventionism of the United States” in her country “through their embassy and other representatives, is intolerable.”
The American ambassador to Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, said on Wednesday that she was concerned to see, during a meeting between a high-level Honduran delegation and the Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, “the Minister of Defense and the Chiefs of Staff sitting next to a drug trafficker from Venezuela.”
Vladimir Padrino Lopez, sanctioned by Washington, is facing indictment in the United States for drug trafficking.
“Yesterday they attacked the head of the armed forces and the Minister of Defense of our country […] “We cannot let this happen,” Mr.me Castro during a speech at an inauguration.
“I will not allow extradition to be used to intimidate or blackmail the Honduran armed forces,” she added.
Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina said he had canceled the treaty to prevent it from being used as a “political weapon.”
The extradition treaty “could be […] a political weapon in this attack” against the government of Mme Castro, Mr. Reina said on a television broadcast.
He added that military intelligence had identified, after the ambassador’s statements, a group of officers who were “conspiring” to organize a “coup d’état” aimed at removing General Roosevelt Hernandez, head of the armed forces.
“We have already experienced a coup, we have already experienced what it means, the violence, the persecution, the banishment, the human rights violations,” she said, referring to the overthrow of her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, in 2009.
This treaty, signed in 1912, was one of the main weapons in the fight against the “narco-state” that Honduras became under the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernandez (2014-2022).
Under the treaty, about 50 Hondurans have been handed over to the United States since 2014.