HONDURAS: Police Corruption, a Never-Ending Story

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, May 20 1998 (IPS) - The latest chapter in the seemingly endless police corruption in Honduras was opened by the testimony of a former sergeant, who accused the top brass of ringleading criminal gangs and ordering summary executions.

Human rights groups in Honduras reported this week that Roberto Ayala, a former police sergeant of the Public Security Force (FSP), was removed from the country after he provided testimony implicating his superiors and colleagues in extrajudicial executions, corruption and theft.

Ayala told the non-governmental Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) that police chief of staff Andres Urtecho was the ringleader of a gang of car thieves and bank robbers. He added that Urtecho had ordered the murders of two supposed accomplices due to a dispute over the carving up of the booty.

The former sergeant also alleged that police colonels Manuel Urbina, David Mendoza and Arnoldo Cabrera headed a gang of thieves and kidnappers known as “Santa Rita”, which operates in northern Honduras.

Ayala provided dates, places and details of specific criminal operations. “My superiors tried to rope me in, but when I saw what was going on, I decided to leave the force. Since then I’ve been the object of persecution,” he told CODEH.

The murder of a colleague who had taken part in the criminal activity was one of the motives that pushed the former police sergeant to speak out. CODEH granted him protection and removed him from the country after verifying that he had received death threats.

The disclosure of Ayala’s testimony “forced us to take him out of the country, because we fear for his life. But it also complicates the investigation by alerting the corrupt police,” who could suspend their activities, said CODEH president Ramon Custodio.

The police brass implicated in corruption and criminal activity will try “to fix things their way, intimidating people as is their style. But we will continue investigating, because Ayala’s testimony is solid, and for us he is a ‘living archive’ of police corruption,” he added.

Urtecho accused the human rights activists of conducting a smear campaign designed to sink his chances of being appointed as the chief of the new civilian police force which is to begin to operate at the end of the month.

Urtecho described Ayala as one of the country’s “most fearsome criminals.”

“I cannot understand why human rights bodies and the office of the public prosecutor are protecting him,” he remarked.

“There is a plot to destroy me. I’m neither a murderer nor a criminal, I’m an honest officer, and will defend myself because I consider myself an honourable and upright person,” he added.

Urtecho has already faced charges of involvement in extrajudicial executions three times in court, and denunciations have been filed with human rights groups accusing him of abuse of authority, issuing death threats and planning robberies and kidnappings.

Juan Carlos Diaz, human rights prosecutor in Honduras, said this week that he would investigate Ayala’s allegations, denied that his office was carrying out a “smear campaign” against the FSP top brass, and recommended that Urtecho “work things out in court.”

Ayala’s testimony came just when Honduras is getting ready for a new civilian police force, whose military structures will remain intact in accordance with a law approved last week, which joins the law enforcement (FSP) and investigative branches under a single command.

Human rights groups and civil society protest that the new regime will mark a return to the impunity and corruption that characterised the police in the 1980s, when numerous serious human rights violations were committed.

Denunciations similar to those brought by Ayala gave rise to the office of the public prosecutor and its criminal investigation police, which has been applauded by civil society for uncovering police and military corruption in its three years of operations.

Local analysts, however, say the success of the investigative police has struck fear into the heart of the country’s political class, which thus decided to once again join the investigative and law enforcement forces to avoid becoming the targets of corruption probes.

A civilian board set up to inspect and purge the FSP announced that it would investigate the allegations aginst Urtecho and other officers.