A top Honduran military lawyer admitted that the forceful removal of President Manuel Zelaya was illegal.In an interview conducted to the websites of the Miami Herald and Salvadoran daily El Faro, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza said that the military broke the law during last Sunday’s coup. “We know there was a crime there,” said the coronel who served as the head legal counsel to the Honduran military and added that the correct legal action would’ve been to make him stand trial for abuse of power.
Nonetheless, Inestroza admitted that the country had become a powder keg reasy to explode due to Zelaya. Furthermore, exiling Zelaya to Costa Rica was necessary in order to avoid nationwide violence according to the coronel:
So when the powers of state united in demanding his ouster, the military put a pajama-clad Zelaya on a plane and sent him to Costa Rica. The rationale: Had Zelaya been jailed, throngs of loyal followers would have erupted into chaos and demanded his release with violence.Honduran appointed president Roberto Micheletti has tried to buy time in the midst of massive international pressure. He backed down from his hard-line of holding presidential elections in November and floated the idea of permitting early elections. Nevertheless, the Organization of American States may boot Honduras out of the bloc as early as Saturday while protests grow against the interim government and the figure demonstrators teasingly call "Pinocheletti". (A reference to the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet who came into power in a 1973 coup.)
''What was more beneficial, remove this gentleman from Honduras or present him to prosecutors and have a mob assault and burn and destroy and for us to have to shoot?'' he said. ``If we had left him here, right now we would be burying a pile of people.''
Image- Straits Times
Online Sources- Miami Herald, BBC News, the Australian, Los Angeles Times, the Latin Americanist
4 comments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/world/americas/02coup.html?_r=1
A quick google turned up a completely different side to this story. Perhaps the Miami Herald is misquoting the good COL.
Thanks for the tip, Anon.
The Herald didn't "misquote" Inestroza; he merely gave 2 sepearte interviews.
When reading the two articles there is very little difference. in both interviews, Inestroza admitted that Zelaya had to be deposed and that Honduras would've been more chaotic had Zelaya stayed in power.
The only possible distinction to could be made is that in the Herald article he said that HOW Zelaya was removed "was a crime" while in the Times piece he justified Zelaya's removal.
The whole interview in Spanish can be found at El Faro (www.elfaro.net) which, by the way, is a Salvadoran news site, not Honduran as this article says.
We've corrected the misquote on El Faro. thanks!
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