TEGUCIGALPA (AP) – President Juan Orlando Hernández said he was concerned on Wednesday that Honduras could lose cooperation with the United States due to the accusations that link it to drug trafficking and which he described as “false testimonies.”
Hernández reiterated that the accusations come from criminal groups seeking revenge because he managed to get them to be processed in the North American country.
He referred to the leaders of the criminal group Los Cachiros, imprisoned in the United States, whom he accused of giving “false testimony” against him and putting at risk the cooperation that Washington provides, not only to Honduras, but to other nations. from America.
“The Cachiros in the most obvious way have been lying, repeatedly,” he expressed in a speech in the National Congress, and commented that it would be terrible if those lies were taken as true.
“If the narcos succeed in getting the US authorities, in essence, to help the drug traffickers to take revenge on the Honduran justice operators and the officials who led the persecution of the narcos, it will mean that sooner or later the effective cooperation systems that I helped to build, which has been repeatedly recognized and praised by Washington, will inevitably collapse and not only in Honduras, but in several countries of the Americas ”, he warned.
Hernández went to the National Congress accompanied by the Defense and Security Cabinet with the purpose of presenting a reform to toughen security measures against maras and gangs.
The day before, a group of Democratic senators presented a bill that seeks to sanction the Honduran president.
The measure adopted by that group of US senators provoked the reaction of two organizations in Honduras, which issued statements in which they asked Hernández for his irrevocable resignation.
One of these organizations is the National Anticorruption Council, a civil society body, which wrote a public letter to the president in which it stated: “He is required to resign his inauguration without hesitation, so that he may be brought to justice.”
For its part, the Medical College of Honduras also joined that request because it considers that there are at least seven causes that justify demanding it, including that he was illegally reelected in 2017 and the accusations that link him to drug trafficking, among others.
In his speech before the Legislative Power, Hernández made it clear that he will end his term on January 27, 2022 after the November 2021 elections.
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