Minister and deputy, related to Xiomara Castro, resign

Madrid. Honduran Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya resigned Sunday after his father, Parliamentary Secretary Carlos Zelaya, announced his resignation after admitting to a 2013 meeting with several drug traffickers who offered him money for his campaign.

“The mission of the Free Party and the Resistance is above the exercise of a public office, therefore, and so that the investigation can be carried out with complete freedom, I have presented my resignation as Minister of Defense to President Xiomara Castro,” declared José Manuel Zelaya in X, defending the “integrity and honor of (his) father.”

These statements come after the pro-government deputy and brother-in-law of the Honduran president, Carlos Zelaya Rosales, announced that he would resign from the Secretariat of Parliament to “clear himself of any shields against investigation,” after being summoned to the trial taking place in New York against former president Juan Orlando Hernández on various charges, including drug trafficking.

The decision was announced after Zelaya Rosales appeared, according to his son “voluntarily,” before the Prosecutor’s Office, where he acknowledged that eleven years ago he was “at a meeting where Cachiro, Ramón Mata, Adán Funes, among other people” were present – accused of drug trafficking – and in which “contributions were offered” for his political campaign.

During a five-hour session, the parliamentary secretary claimed that he was the victim of a “trap,” alleging that “I now know that the meeting was recorded,” according to statements made by the newspaper La Prensa.

On the other hand, Zelaya said that “if tomorrow the United States says to extradite me, I am ready,” while ruling out that his resignation is related to President Castro’s recent decision to break the extradition treaty with the United States.

The deputy publicly apologized to his brother, the former president and Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya – who called an “emergency” meeting of the Libre Party for this Sunday – and to the president, for participating in the meeting of which, he says, “there is a video”, without his “endorsement or accompaniment.”