By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 28 1996 (IPS)

The Honduran Armed Forces called for an end to the fuss surrounding the forced disappearances of the eighties, asking for the search for 16 human rights abusing officers to be called off.

Head of the army, General Mario Hung Pacheco, said he was annoyed, and that it is time “this circus, which can to nothing to feed the people, was put to an end.”

“Reinstating the trials of events which happened 13 years ago seems to me like living rooted in the past and not wanting to understand that this was a product of the war, something which affected all the Latin American nations,” he said.

These heated comments followed the issue of warrants on 13 army officers on Monday, adding to the three others who were already fugitives from justice.

A judge in the city of Choluteca, 150 km south of the capital, ordered the army personnel to be arrested in their barracks, but they were not found, as they have been granted “indefinite leave” by their superiors.

The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Honduras (Codeh) said these officers were responsible for the disappearances of Adan Avilez and the Nicaraguan Amado Espinoza Paz in 1982.

Witnesses said these two men were executed by the military and buried among the “unknown,” though a team of forensic scientists and anthropologists found their bodies last year.

The warrants issued include powerful officers in the police force, the army and the now disbanded secret police.

These include Police inspector Marco Antonio Matute and military spokesman Manuel Suarez Benavides, and Colonel Alexander Hernandez – responsible for 32 of the 184 disappearances of the eighties.

Hung said the new cases against these people would not “prosper and the best thing to do would be to stop the hatred and start to promote a culture embracing human rights.”

“Vendettas of any sort will not help solve the problems. We believe this situation will come to no good, and I am asking the press to be responsible and not follow the lines of certain sectors,” he added.

After meeting with the army leadership to evaluate the new crisis, the General asked Codeh and other human rights groups to abandon their stance and take up the policy of “reconciliation, forgiveness and forgetting.”

“It isn’t that we are backed into a corner, but that we think it is time this came to a halt, because at times, what is legal is not just, and this circus must come to an end,” he said.

This Friday, members of the public prosecutor’s office and the human rights groups pointed out that it would be difficult to catch up with most of the fugitive officers as they have already left the country.

President Carlos Reina said several of them were in Spain, which “complicates their capture,” he said.

Another few are in the United States, and Leo Valladares, state Commissioner of Human Rights has appealed to Washington to help locate them.

Public Prosecutor Edmundo Orellana said their extradition should be filed, calling for the migration services to prevent any further offenders from fleeing the nation.

This is the second mass warrant issuing session within the last year. In the first the papers were produced for three officers responsible for the temporary disappearance of six political opponents in 1982.

Not one of the offenders has yet been caught.

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