Enacting Impunity

Oscar Alvarez Guerrero, current head of the National Party but previously the Security Minister for Porfirio Lobo Sosa and enactor of the "mano dura" approach to gangs may not mean to, but is enacting impunity.

For the last month Honduras has been coping with leak after leak about corruption within the National Police, culminating in the El Heraldo and New York Times stories naming the police who organized and murdered two high government officials, drug czar Julian Aristides Gonzalez and consultant to the polivce investigating drug trafficking, Alfredo Landaverde.

Among those who have been publicly named is Oscar Alvarez.  The Public Prosecutor's office has been, and continues to be slow to act on this information, preferring to "investigate the veracity of the leaked documents" instead of taking action to talk to those implicated.  But today, the Public Prosecutor's office had cited Oscar Alvarez to appear to make a statement and answer questions.

Alvarez sent his lawyer, Jaime Banegas, to tell the Public Prosecutor that "because he was a high government official, they should take his testimony at his home, at the day and hour he chooses." Alvarez told the press:

"I can't be cited because I don't have anything to do with the case."

The message is clear.  "I'm too important, and too busy running the National Party and being a Congress person to be interviewed by a bunch of lawyers investigating murder;" emphasis on "important".  That's not only arrogant, but basically tells everyone that impunity is alive and well with the political elite in Honduras.