RIGHTS-HONDURAS: Military Denies Plot to Overthrow Castro

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 10 1998 (IPS) - Human rights activists demanded a serious investigation Wednesday into charges that Honduran military officers participated in an aborted plot to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Government Human Rights Commissioner Leo Valladares said a report by a prominent U.S. newspaper this week “must not be seen as ‘fantasy’, as the military has labelled it, but as serious charges which merit an immediate in-depth investigation by the government.”

A report by journalist Juan Tamayo in the Miami Herald this week provided details on an alleged association between Honduran military officers and anti-Castro activists from Cuba to set up a secret military base in Honduras from which to launch an operation to overthrow the Cuban government.

Former inspector-general of the armed forces Colonel Guillermo Pinel Calix has been identified as the link between the army and anti-Castro groups represented by Luis Posadas Carriles, a Cuban national who has reportedly been a long-time friend of a number of Honduran military officers.

“For some time now there has been talk of these alliances between Honduran officers and anti-Castro activists, which is disturbing because the country is once again emerging into the international spotlight as a nation where obscure alliances, which are not at all in the interests of democracy, are woven,” said Valladares.

The human rights official told IPS that Honduras has had enough problems with the crimes against humanity committed by security forces in the past decade without another “load of discrediting information falling on us.”

“It seems the military have not gotten used to living in democracy, and are seeking mechanisms to continue feeding into their corruption,” said the coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (Cofadeh), Bertha Oliva.

“I believe the charges put forth by the U.S. daily, because it is a serious newspaper that would not launch accusations just for the sake of writing a good story, as our illustrious military officers want us to believe,” she added. “They don’t understand that at this stage they are in no position to talk about smear campaigns.”

Over the past two years, the Cuban government has turned into a nightmare for the armed forces in Honduras, whose officers have been accused of offering to train anti-Castro groups on Honduran soil.

Tamayo wrote in the Miami Herald Monday that Honduran military officers were paid 350,000 dollars for establishing a secret base here, charges dismissed by the armed forces Tuesday as “fantasy.”

Pinel Calix and spokespersons for the armed forces questioned the credibility of the investigation conducted by Tamayo, who they described as an “enemy” of the military. They also threatened the reporter with legal action on slander charges.

Pinel Calix, former chief of intelligence and of the notorious Honduran secret police, now defunct, heads the National Contingency Commission, the office in charge of disaster prevention and preparedness.

The officer said Tamayo’s charges were “a product of speculation.”

“They have nothing against me, and are only trying to hurt me. I don’t know any anti-Castro Cubans,” he claimed, while military spokesman Colonel Mario Villanueva called the accusations “rash.”

“We are tired of all this fantasy, a product of the obtuse imagination of those who wrote the story,” said Villanueva. “We lament that this campaign hurts our morale, and will sue if necessary.”

Relations between the Honduran military and Cuban anti-Castro activists have become cozy in the past five years, since a supposed arms trafficker, Mario Delamico, allegedly forged ties between them and planned an attack against then-president Carlos Reina.

The attempt on Reina’s life was reportedly due to the then- president’s determination to reduce the power wielded by the armed forces and to the displeasure of anti-Castro activists over Tegucigalpa’s announcement of its intentions to reestablish diplomatic relations with Havana.

Political analyst Victor Meza told IPS that “these alliances are as certain as the fact that the military violated human rights last decade,” something that has been acknowledged by the government.

Meza demanded that the reports, the product of a two-year investigation, be taken seriously. He underlined that they came “at a moment in which civilians are preparing to assign the military a new and more realistic role.”