HONDURAS: Military Could Be Accused of Illegal Possession of Arms

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 6 1999 (IPS) - The Honduran armed forces may be accused of terrorism, based on the illegal possession of an arsenal reportedly capable of equipping an entire army, high-level officials of the Attorney-General’s Office announced Wednesday.

The clandestine arsenal, which was confiscated by a judge, included AK-47 assault rifles, anti-aircraft guns and an enormous quantity of ammunition and gunpowder. It belonged to Cuban- American arms-runner Mario Delamico.

The military has committed “offences ranging from abuse of power to violation of the constitution, under which they could be accused of the crime of terrorism against the state because they were hiding the arms, without registering them in their inventories,” said Dagoberto Mejia, a coordinator of the Attorney- General’s Office.

According to the official, the weapons discovered in two storerooms of a military unit in the northern municipality of Naco “demonstrate a series of irregularities and violations of the constitution, because the military is not authorised to look after and protect weapons belonging to arms-runners.”

The arms have been in the hands of the military since February 1988, said Mejia, who added that “there is no legal accord approving the safekeeping of that arsenal in the battalions.”

Officials in the district attorney’s office in the northern city of San Pedro Sula and Judge Nelson Baudilio Lopez impounded the weapons found in the Naco battalion, after a denunciation was filed by a former police adviser.

The weapons were apparently destined to go to the now-defunct “contra” forces that fought the leftist Sandinista government in power from 1979 to 1990 in Nicaragua, and there was reportedly an attempt three years ago to sell them to the army of another Central American country.

Armed forces chief Gen. Mario Hung Pacheco said the weapons under “military safekeeping” were part of an accord signed by the government of Jose Azcona (1985-88) and Delamico, who has been signalled as a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collaborator.

“That agreement was part of the Cold War agreements, which is why we have the arms in our keeping. I don’t see what the problem is,” Hung Pacheco said last month. But Azcona insisted that he was unaware of the existence of the arsenal, and said he had not signed “any agreement with anyone.

“Delamico, I understand, is a great friend of the armed forces, and during the Cold War, they were in command in this country,” said the former president.

Prosecutor Clovis Morales, in charge of the case, said the weapons, which are new and in good condition, constitute “a complete outfit for equipping an army.”

The commanders of the Naco battalion “say they did not know of the existence (of the arms), but that is illogical,” said Morales. “We are going to investigate them and their predecessors…(because) they possessed arms illegally and will have to account for this in court.”

Military spokesman Mario Villanueva said the prosecutors were making a big fuss about something that was normal last decade. “There is an agreement that protects us, and the logical thing would be to look for the owner, turn over the weapons, and for the whole affair to die there.”

The armed forces “believe things are going to stay this way,” but “Honduras is no longer the same country it was in the 1980s, and we are going to enforce the law and the state of law,” responded Mejia.

He added that the military had refused to allow the existence of the weapons to be verified until a legal warrant was issued.

Although Hung Pacheco agreed to launch an investigation when the denunciation of the existence of the arsenal came to light, “to date that report has not arrived, and we had to act on our own,” said Mejia.

The case is even more serious, he added, because Delamico has been implicated in an attempt on president Carlos Reina’s (1994- 98) life committed four years ago, according to reports by U.S. newspapers.

Human rights groups are pressing the Attorney-General’s Office to file a lawsuit against Hung Pacheco for illegal possession of arms, and to investigate the CIA and Delamico’s involvement in the low-intensity war waged in Central America in the 1980s.

The military made an attempt to sell the weapons found in Naco to the new civilian police force, but a council of notables rejected the proposal.