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Tag: honduras

  • Miss Honduras, Sister Found Dead

    Miss Honduras, Sister Found Dead

    Miss Honduras and Miss World contestant Maria Jose Alvarado and her sister were found buried near a riverbank roughly 12 miles from the northwestern city of Santa Barbara Wednesday. The two had disappeared while attending a resort hotel party last Thursday. The sister Sofia Trinidad’s boyfriend is currently being held by police under suspicion of murder.

    Alvarado, 19, who was crowed Miss Honduras in April, was set to fly to London Wednesday, in order to compete in the Miss World beauty pageant. Miss World pageant chairwoman Julia Morley said in a statement, “We are devastated by this terrible loss of two young women, who were so full of life. We will be holding a special service with all of the Miss World contestants on Sunday, where we will be honoring the lives of Maria Jose Alvarado and Sofia Trinidad, and say prayers for them and their family.”

    Chief detective Leandro Osorio said the bodies of Alvarado and her 23-year-old sister were unearthed along the banks of the Aguagual River, near the town of Arada, which lies in a region plagued by violence.

    “We are 100 percent sure that it’s them,” Osorio remarked, adding that, “we are holding the author of this horrific act, Mr Plutarco Ruiz. We have found the murder weapon and the vehicle used to transport them, a white pick-up truck.” Osorio commented that additional suspects are being looked at, as the truck was cleaned and repainted at a garage.

    Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women, said in July that assault against females in Honduras increased 263.4-percent between 2005 and 2013.

    Arabeska Sanchez, a criminologist at the National University’s Violence Observatory, added that details of Alvarado’s killing were indicative of organized crime. Sanchez commented, “only organized crime networks rent a business, such as the resort in this case, close it to maintain control and post guards outside. These crimes have been happening a lot in Honduras, but in this case it gets attention because it has an international impact.”

    Honduras presently hold the world’s highest murder rate, at 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012.

  • Honduras Police Chief Fired Over Abuse

    Honduras Police Chief Fired Over Abuse

    President Porfirio Lobo fired Honduras’ Five-star General, Juan Carlos Bonilla, the country’s national police chief on Thursday. Bonilla has faced accusations for years of running death squads, civil cleansings and has been the target of frequent abuse claims.

    Present day Honduras and the world has heard claims of Bonilla overseeing a department specifically believed to beat, kill and lose “disappearing” detainees. He is the top cop in the country that serves as a way station for most South American cocaine bound for the United States and beyond.

    Bonilla runs all policing in Honduras. His responsibilities encompass everything from planning to investigations. He also is responsible for approving travel for training and vehicle repairs. He also oversees the police force – a force that is not at all consistent in that some officers show up, some don’t, some are corrupt and the force is believed to be somewhere between 8,000 to 15,000 officers.

    For one man to oversee that much, trouble must be amiss. There is no way one person can handle that much responsibility. Bonilla told The Associated Press he denied he once led a social cleansing campaign, that his police force is as criminal as those it arrests, or that he is in any way responsible for a rash of gang members who disappeared after being arrested.

    “I can’t be on top of everything. Sometimes things will escape me. I’m human,” Bonilla said.

    His police force is routinely accused of civil rights abuses, the AP reported at least five cases of alleged gang members missing or killed after being taken into police custody in a wave of social cleansing of criminals.

    Bonilla said he is aware of the charges and insisted that every complaint is being investigated. Excesses “happen, yes. We investigate them and act,” he said. “You cannot use a word like ‘death squads,’ because there is no chain of command or an order by me, never, under any circumstances, to act illegally.”

    He defended the institution where “I’ve spent my whole life. I am loyal to it.”

    Among his personal books, Bonilla keeps a leather-bound copy of the indictment against him. “It’s very painful as a human being for your family, your children, your children’s schoolmates, your father, your friends or a woman you just met to ask you if you are a murderer,” he said.

    Bonilla “was the only high-ranking official without known ties to organized crime,” said Arabeska Sanchez, who is an investigator with the University Institute of Peace and Security and a teacher at the country’s Police Academy. “He remains under suspicion because it is impossible to know if he is implicated in state policies of human rights violations that have occurred close to him.”

    His replacement will be Commissioner Ramon Sabillon, who said that he expects to talk to Bonilla about the job and the state of security in Honduras.

    Hondurans are no doubt happy to see him go – they exist in a literal war zone and hide in their homes at dusk due to the violence and gunfire. They wake to discarded bodies. Honduras has one of the world’s worst homicide rates.

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  • Group Lost At Sea Four Days; Survives On Rainwater

    It was like the opening theme song montage from Gilligan’s Island, only there was no radio, no hammocks, and no one was laughing.

    Two Americans, six Hondurans, and a Canadian set out on a pleasure cruise near Honduras on Saturday. They were headed for a nearby island when their boat ran out of gas. The trip was only supposed to be 18 miles, or about two hours. But it was 5 days later before they were found 66 miles from their intended destination. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, they may not have survived.

    During the ordeal, the crew had no food and survived by drinking rainwater they caught in buckets during two storms. Tasha Brown, the 20-year-old Canadian on the trip, told ABC News about their survival.

    “In the middle of the night we hit two storms, and it just poured and poured,” Brown said “We flipped over every bucket that we had, every container, every surface that could catch water. We prayed that we weren’t going to be flipped over by the storm and that we would have water for the next day.”

    The group was located by a Coast Guard aircraft after a rescue operation that had covered 4,502 miles by air. An Army helicopter lifted the passengers and crew to safety, assisted by a Navy helicopter. Family members of the survivors say that the Honduran Navy and police were also very helpful in finding the survivors.

    “They got real excited when they saw the flare go into the water, and the helicopter was on scene within 20 minutes,” U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Joe Boyes said.

    The Americans will stay in a hospital in Roatan to recover for a couple of days, then fly home to the U.S. on Saturday.