By Al Giordano

General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who appeared on stage this week with Honduran coup “president” Roberto Michiletti, and who ordered the kidnapping and forced deportation of P resident Manuel Zelaya last Sunday, was charged with grand auto theft in 1993, Narco News has learned.

On February 2, 1993, the front page of the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo included this headline: “Eleven Members of the Gang of 13 Go to Prison”:

“Eleven individuals arrested for their alleged participation in the theft of 200 luxury automobiles… were sent to prison yesterday… (including) Colonel Wilfredo Leva Caborrea and Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, accused as alleged participants…”

(Narco News makes the document available for download by press and public here, including two interior pages of the newspaper that report on the case, each mentioning the then-major, now commander of the military coup in Honduras.)

The newspaper report further stated:

“…Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, connected to the theft of luxury cars in the ‘Gang of 13,’ will be imprisoned in the Central Penitentiary (PC, in its Spanish initials).”

Prior to his criminal acts, Vásquez attended the US School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, when the school was located in Panama, but he did not graduate.

It was the same Honduran Congress that endorsed, after the fact, last Sunday’s military coup, and named Roberto Micheletti as the country's "president," that promoted this common car thief as head of the Armed Forces.

Memo to the General: Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear...

Rampant Corruption at DHS and subordinate agencies: Open Letter to 44th U.S. President Barack Obama and the 111th United States Senate and United States House of Representatives.

Every DHS employee has the right to work in an environment free of corruption, misconduct or mismanagement.

It is imperative that U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, and U.S. House of Representative Bennie G. Thompson get together with all of their Homeland Security Committee and Subcommitte members hold hearings on corruption (criminal and administrative), gross mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse of authority by public employees of DHS who are being paid with american taxpayers' dollars. 

Despite Repression and the Suspension of Constitutional Guarantees, Hondurans Keep Fighting the Coup Government

The anti-coup movement's momentum appears to be building across Honduras, with protests reported across the country.  Meanwhile, international pressure builds against the coup government.

Over the past two days, anti-coup protests were reported in Tocoa, Colon; San Pedro Sula; La Ceiba; El Progreso, Yoro; Tegucigapla; Intibuca; El Paraiso; Olancho; Santa Barbara; and all over President Zelaya's native department of Olancho.  Moreover, the BBC reports that citizens have blocked major highways in Copan and Tocoa.  The BBC's sources on the ground in Honduras say anti-coup protests have occurred in the majority of Honduras' departments.

The June 29 coup in Honduras did not surprise me.

The day before I read in the morning newspaper that General Romeo Vasquez said a coup d’état was “not certain.” He said “we (the military) are seeking the use of reason and not force in order to resolve the conflicts by dialogue.”

As soon as I saw the words, “not certain,” I said to myself immediately that it was one of the options the general was considering. I also felt he was not talking about dialogue but about a monologue that the opposition would present to President Manuel Zelaya.

Latin American Presidents, OAS Secretary General, and Citizen Caravans Will Accompany Him

Ousted Honduran President Manual Zelaya has announced that he will return to Honduras on Thursday.  "I'm going to finish my four-year term, whether or not you coup leaders are in agreement," he stated. 

Zelaya will return to Honduras accompanied by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, and a commission of Latin American presidents.  The Argentine government has announced that its President Cristina Fernandez will accompany Zelaya to Honduras as part of the presidential commission.  In a press conference following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Zelaya stated that Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa will also accompany him.

Report from a contact involved in popular struggle and human rights movement in Tegucigalpa, Honduras received Monday June 29th at 11:04pm.
 
Reportaje de un contacto del movimiento civil y de derechos humanos en Tegucigalpa, Honduras el Lunes 29 de Junio recibido a las 11:04 de la noche. - Español abajo
 
Greetings,
 
 
Today has been a very tragic day for our country. The army's violent repression continues against the demonstrators protesting peacefully for the restoration of constitutional order and democracy in Honduras.

Border Closings, Suspension of Aid, and Cutting of Diplomatic Relations Present a Non-Violent Response to a Violent Coup

Mexico and the countries of Central America have announced various political and economic sanctions against the coup government in Honduras as part of a non-violent and non-military strategy to return democratically elected President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya to power.

Member countries of the Central American Regional Integration adopted a resolution earlier today that requires taking "necessary measures in a staggered manner, including measures related to interregional commerce, against Honduras' de facto government until President Jose Manuel Zelaya is reinstated as president and institutional normalcy is reestablished."  In the first direct action against the coup government, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala will close their borders with Honduras for 48 hours.  The border closing means that all cross-border commerce will be shut down for 48 hours.

By Al Giordano

Community Radio “Es Lo de Menos” was the first to report that the Fourth Infantry Battalion has rebelled from the military coup regime in Honduras. The radio station adds that “it seems” (“al parecer,” in the original Spanish) that the Tenth Infantry Battalion has also broken from the coup.

Rafael Alegria, leader of Via Campesina, the country’s largest social organization, one that has successfully blockaded the nation’s highways before to force government concessions, tells Alba TV:

“The popular resistance is rising up throughout the country. All the highways in the country are blockaded…. The Fourth Infantry Battallion… is no longer following the orders of Roberto Micheletti.”

Angel Alvarado of Honduras’ Popular Union Bloc tells Radio Mundial:

"Two infantry battalions of the Honduran Army have risen up against the illegitimate government of Roberto Micheletti in Honduras. They are the Fourth Infantry Battalion in the city of Tela and the Tenth Infantry Battalion in La Ceiba (the second largest city in Honduras), both located in the state of Atlántida."

(You can see Tela and La Ceiba on the map, above, along the country's northern coast.)

Meanwhile, defenders of the violent coup d’Etat now have to eat the fact that their favored regime has extended its wave of terror to the press corps, censoring all independent media in the country, including CNN and Telesur. Reuters reports:

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras has shut down television and radio stations since an army coup over the weekend, in a media blackout than has drawn condemnation from an international press freedom group.

Shortly after the Honduran military seized President Manuel Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica on Sunday, soldiers stormed a popular radio station and cut off local broadcasts of international television networks CNN en Espanol and Venezuelan-based Telesur, which is sponsored by leftist governments in South America.

A pro-Zelaya channel also was shut down.

The few television and radio stations still operating on Monday played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.

At the White House this afternoon, US President Obama reiterated his government’s non-recognition of the coup regime. According to the White House pool report by David Jackson of USA Today (obtained by Narco News via email):

Obama criticized the Honduras coup as "not legal," and said it would set a "terrible precedent" for the region. "We do not want to go back to a dark past," he said. "We always want to stand with democracy."

If Rafael Alegría - a serious man who gets serious results - says that the highways of the country are successfully blockaded, I tend to believe him. He likewise is not one to spread rumors about the Fourth Infantry Battalion without having solid information.

It seemed inevitable that once the cat is got of the bag regarding the total international rejection of the coup d'etat that military divisions would revolt and point their tanks in the opposite direction: toward the coup plotters above them. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of a short-lived coup in Honduras.

Keep refreshing the front page of Narco News for more updates, sure to shortly come.

Update: TeleSur TV is reporting that its correspondents in Honduras, as well as those of Associated Press, have been arrested by the coup regime.

Update II: Here is a fuller text of US President Obama's statement at the aforementioned press conference:

President Zelaya was democratically elected. He had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there. In that, we have joined all the countries in the region, including Colombia and the Organization of American States.

 

I think it's -- it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections.

The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America.

We don't want to go back to a dark past. The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies. But over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable toward the United States. And that is a tradition that we want to continue.

So we are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected president. And we will work with the regional organizations, like OAS, and with other international institutions to see if we can resolve this in a peaceful way.

(Bold text for emphasis.)

Foreign TV Channels Blocked, Violence Outside Presidential Palace

Honduras' Radio Globo reports that today Honduras' coup president Roberto Micheletti entered the Presidential Palace from which Honduras' legitimate President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was kidnapped early yesterday morning.  Micheletti will hold a press conference from the President's office later today. 

The Informant Interviews Part III: Fast food with a side order of death and betrayal

Heriberto Santillan Tabares, a narco-trafficker connected to the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (VCF) drug organization, was arrested in El Paso, Texas, in mid-January 2004 after being lured into the trap by a U.S. government informant.

The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, as part of the plan, is pulled over by an El Paso squad car while driving in his car on a pre-designated street. Santillan is a passenger in the vehicle, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest Santillan.

The same day, DEA sources indicate, another of Santillan’s associates, a Mexican state police commander named Miguel Loya Gallegos (Santillan’s nephew), executes a man in a pick-up truck in Juarez, Mexico, and seriously wounds the passenger — shot in the mouth and neck. Loya also allegedly shows up at the scene of the murder to investigate the crime. Over the prior five months, at least a dozen other people had been tortured and murdered by Santillan’s VCF cell and buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez.

An unknown number of Hondurans have taken to the streets today in an effort to stop the coup that the military, in league with Congress and the Supreme Court, has carried out against democratically elected President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya.

Due to intermitant power outages and heavy rain, independent media within Honduras has had extreme difficulty transmitting news.  This means that while there's been plenty of news in the mainstream media about the actions people with a lot of political power have been taking--from Chavez and the ALBA nations to the Organization of American States to the United States--there's been very little reported about what rank-and-file Hondurans have been doing to reverse the coup.

However, it is clear that Hondurans are resisting. People are taking the streets in Honduras despite incredibly hostile conditions created by the military. Radio Es Lo De Menos reports that their colleagues on the ground have been fired at by snipers who are positioned in rooftops around the city.  They stress that the gunfire at this point has only been in the form of "warning shots" and no one has been reported injured from gunfire.

Congressman Cesar Ham is a Zelaya Ally and Organizer of the Opinion Poll on a New Constitution

Correction: News reports translated by Narco News on Monday that Honduran political leader Cesar Ham had been assassinated appear not to be accurate. This report says otherwise, that Ham is alive and well. We apologize for any confusion caused by our first report, and share in the world's relief that the reports we initially translated were inaccurate.

"The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the coup in Honduras in the following statement:

The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue. Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago.

US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens said in a press conference from the US Embassy today, "The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."

Lloren's statement is particularly significant because it means that the US refuses to recognize the man Congress has sworn in as Honduras' interim president, Roberto Micheletti.  Micheletti was the President of Congress before being sworn in as interim President.

School of the Americas-Trained Military Detains and Expels Democratically-Elected President Zelaya

Early this morning approximately 200 Honduran soldiers arrived at President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya's residence, reportedly fired four shots, and detained the President.  Zelaya told TeleSUR that the soldiers took him to an air force base and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.  

Zelaya told TeleSUR from San Jose, Costa Rica, "They threatened to shoot me."  Honduras' ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Sosa Coello, reports that the president has been beaten up.

A "Tense Calm" Settles Over the Country Amidst Media Spin Campaigns and Threats to Imprison Voters and Poll Workers

The situation in Honduras was tense but calm today as citizens prepared to vote in a national public opinion poll that will ask them if they wish to include a referendum on a new Constitutional Convention in the country's November elections.  The tension is exacerbated by the partisan Honduran media, which, with few exceptions, has mounted a confusion and spin campaign against President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya.