Tigre Bonilla and Rene Osorio Canales Out

Porfirio Lobo Sosa  is letting Juan Orlando Hernández start making changes in the Honduran government before he is sworn in this coming January, underlining the collaboration that exists between these two Partido Nacional administrations, while highlighting their differences in key changes in the police and military leadership.

On December 17, Lobo Sosa gave his Ministers until the end of the day to hand in their resignations so that Hernandez could install his choices once he made them.  The first act was to shuffle the command in the police and military.  The new holders of these positions have already been sworn in by Lobo Sosa today, with Hernández speaking at the ceremony.

Juan Carlos "Tigre" Bonilla is out.  Ramon Antonio Sabillon Pineda is the new police commander.  Sabillon previously was the commander of the special investigations division of the police. 

Bonilla is rumored to have had differences with Arturo Corrales, the Security Minister, who Hernández is considering keeping in that office. 

Felix Villanueva Mejia will be the assistant director of the police.  The preventative police will be headed by Javier Leopoldo Flores Milla, while Hernández will keep the current director of the transit police, Abencio Atilio Flores Morazán, in that position.  The director of the investigative police (Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal) will be Jose Leandro Osorio.  The special investigative police will be headed by Ruben Martel Garcia,while Hector Ivan Mejia will serve as director of the police academy.  Abraham Flores Marcelino will be head of the police special unit, and José Leonel Enamorado will be the police commander of the joint military and police task force.

The high command of the Honduran Armed Forces was also changed significantly. 

In the place of the current military commander, Rene Osorio Canales, will be Fredy Santiago Diaz Zelaya.  In December Zelaya received his fifth star, along with Julian Pacheco Tinoco, who will remain as commander of the Military Intelligence service.  Rigoberto Espinosa Posadas, who was promoted in December, will be second in command of the Honduran Joint Chiefs.  Miguel Palacios Romero will be the military Inspector General.  Jorge Alberto Fernández López will command the Air Force, and Héctor Orlando Caballero Espinoza will command the Navy.

Lobo Sosa also let Juan Orlando Hernández name and install his head of the Dirección Ejecutivo de Ingresos (DEI), the Honduran equivalent of the IRS. 

This important government unit, which failed to meet its quotas all through the Lobo Sosa government, will be Miriam Guzman.  She also has taken the reins of her government unit already.

Corrales: Blame the Civilian Aircraft

According to Arturo Corrales, Foreign Minister of Honduras, the civil aviation planes that were shot down by Honduran Air Force pilots in August were to blame for their own deaths. 

At least that's the conclusion to be drawn from his statements that no one in Honduras is responsible.

Corrales makes some extraordinary claims in an article in El Heraldo, claims that should give the United States pause in negotiating a new four year agreement with Honduras about cooperation in drug interdiction.

The article is primarily about the obligation of Honduras' Public Prosecutor to investigate who gave the order to shoot down at least two civilian aircraft, in contravention of a 1942 treaty on civil aviation.

But it also includes a statement by Corrales, whose position in the Honduran government is equivalent to that of Hilary Clinton in the US administration.

Corrales said no civilian or military official ordered the shooting down of the civilian aircraft:

"I understand that there was no order; I understand that no one gave the order."

At first, this seems like throwing the pilots to the wolves, since they would then presumably be responsible for their own actions.  

But Corrales absolves them:

The responsibility for the downing cannot be attributed to the pilots of the military planes who shot at the illegal planes, since they risk their lives to go in search of irregular flights and an accident can happen in a fraction of a second.

This is, at best, a non sequitur: because they risk their lives and an accident can happen in a matter of moments, they are not responsible for shooting down two civil aircraft in one month?

The last time Honduras shot down a civilian aircraft was in 2004. Corrales' conclusion strains credibility.

There is a simpler explanation: the Honduran Armed Forces has been advocating for exactly this policy, while presumably knowing it violated Honduran treaty obligations, ever since the spring of this year. These pilots were enacting that desired approach, whether there was an official policy or not.

Paraphrasing an anonymous person identifying himself as a former Honduran Air Force pilot, who wrote a comment on the article in El Heraldo: that's how we've been trained at least since General Osorio Canales was a cadet.

The comment is no longer available; but it is consistent with statements in April of this year by Osorio Canales, still the commander of the Honduran Armed Forces, saying

"The National Congress should reform the law [implementing the 1942 treaty] and consider leaving the treaty because we cannot take down civilian planes that illegally enter our airspace".

At the time he said that there was discussion in the Honduran Congress about the proposal.

We might want to remember why the international presumption is against shooting down civilian aircraft that wander into national airspace without responding to requests for identity. It is simply this: you may think they are engaged in illegal activity: but you cannot know that.

Both Peru and Columbia, at US urging, have adopted a policy of shooting down civilian aircraft suspected of drug trafficking. In both countries that policy has resulted in the shooting down of civilian flights carrying missionaries, not drugs.

Corrales made it clear how poorly justified these incidents actually are, in his comments implying the pilots of these planes were to blame:

The downing was the product of a extreme situations:  such as the flight of the planes was in the early morning hours and the planes were flying at low speed; therefore they were shot at.

A neutral party reading these comments would presumably continue to be troubled that the Honduran government is neither taking responsibility, nor (apparently) is clear on what constitutes a suspicious way of acting (early morning flights at low speed are surely not automatically drug traffickers, even if some drug traffickers fly at those times).

So it is more than troubling that an article early this morning in La Prensa quotes US Ambassador Lisa Kubiske suggesting US radar assistance will be returned to Honduras "soon", specifically because

President Porfirio Lobo and minister Arturo Corrales spoken clearly about the topic of the civilian aircraft and the treaties that Honduras has signed with the international community.

We agree that Corrales has spoken clearly. But we wonder what Ambassador Kubiske finds reassuring in what he has said.

More Policing, Less Legality

General Rene Osorio Canales announced Tuesday that selection had already begun for the new elite military unit, Los Tigres (The Tigers), who will function like a police SWAT team.

The unit, when organized, will have 200 members.  Osorio Canales revealed that the officers from the military and police assigned to the group will recommend the function, organization, and training of the Tigers.

One small problem.  The final version of the law to create the unit has not even been written; so the final version has yet to be presented to Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the national Congress, or the Minister of Defense.

Osorio Canales told La Tribuna that the final draft law would be presented to Lobo Sosa, Juan Orlando Hernandez, and Osorio Canales's boss, Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla, before the 15th of August.

An early version of the proposed law was sent to Congress on July 26.

This draft law splits the command structure of the unit.  It is nominally a rapid response police force fighting organized crime, but will train on military bases.

In the fight against organized crime, the proposed unit will be under the command of the Minister of Security, while in time of war, it would report to the Defense Minister.

The proposed organization supports Lobo Sosa's goal of merging the Security and Defense Ministries. It also continues a troubling trend of merging civilian policing and military defense.

Osorio Canales seems to be constituting the unit before it has been authorized.

By Honduran law, Congress must pass legislation creating the unit and assign it a budget. The president must sign the law, and then it must be published, before anyone can legally spend a penny on the Tigers.

Government spending without budgetary support is a crime in Honduras. It was one of the major criticisms of the Zelaya government, in its final year in office, when it operated without a congressionally-approved budget.

But times, of course, have changed. Who needs to worry about due process or the rule of law in Honduras today?

Drug Plane "Forced" to Land!?

On Tuesday the Honduran newspapers were full of a story that seemed to involve helicopters or maybe fixed wing aircraft  intercepting and forcing a drug plane to crash-land in Yoro.

More details have appeared in the press today, enough to call into question parts of the story.

The official story on offer by spokespeople for the Air Force in Honduras (unnamed) is that two helicopters (or maybe fixed wing aircraft) of theirs intercepted and followed a Cessna 310R aircraft with a Venezuelan tail number.

According to the official story, the plane was forced to land, and attempted to use a rural road previously used by drug aircraft as a landing strip, but struck some tree branches and ended up wrecked, in pieces, alongside the road. A bad enough crash to wreck the plane, but not severely injure the pilot.

The military helicopters (or fixed wing aircraft), instead of landing, or reporting the event to the nearest authorities on the ground, flew back to their base, and it wasn't until the next morning when residents of the area found the aircraft and called the police that someone came out to the "crash" site to investigate.

By then the lone pilot, and his cargo, were long gone.

Residents of the area report that the plane, which landed around 11 PM Monday night, was met by strangers in cars who unloaded the plane and left in the direction of Jocon, Yoro.

These details make it seem clear that the plane, tail number YV1440, intended to land on this road. It was met by people prepared to offload the pilot and any cargo.  You don't organize such a project at the drop of a hat.  It had to be pre-arranged.

So if this aircraft always meant to land there, where's the "force"? We've seen photos of many wrecked planes that attempted to land on rural Honduran roads, all without military intervention.

As of Tuesday afternoon the official spokesperson for the Honduran Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Jeremias Arevalo, knew nothing of the event, according to La Tribuna.

So what part of this story is true?

Well, there is a Cessna 310R, tail number YV1440, lying in pieces next to a road in Yoro.

According to a website that tracks flight plans, that tail number belongs to a Cessna 182 Skylane from Venezuela, which clearly is not the plane pictured in Yoro, which is a Cessna 310R.

An airplane with the listed tail number that does match the one on the side of the road in Yoro shows up in this ad from Venezuela, for sale for about $230,000, offered by a Miguel Angel Gonzalez in Venezuela.  The phone number listed is that of the Restaurant White, a Mediterranean-style restaurant in Caracas, Venezuela.

It seems clear from the photos in the Honduran newspapers and on the website offering the plane for sale that the two planes are one and the same.  Same paint job, same configuration, but with all the seats, except for that of the pilot, removed.

Maybe some Air Force helicopters or planes intercepted this Cessna and followed it for a while, but it seems unlikely they actually forced it down.

Judging from the reception party waiting, it always intended to land there, or somewhere nearby, or there would not have been cars ready to pick up the pilot and cargo and spirit them away.

What about the lack of reporting the plane back to anybody on the ground?  This leads me to believe that at best, the Honduran Air Force intercepted and chased the plane (which flies slowly, top speed about 220 MPH), but lost it before it landed, as some reports stated on Tuesday.

Someone seems to have felt the need to make up a better story: but on the face of it, this is another in a series of unchallenged flights using small planes treated as essentially disposable-- presumably transporting drugs.

The continued inability of the Honduran Air Force to actually do anything about this traffice casts General Rene Osorio's recent statements about shooting down drug planes into a different light. Presumably, his subordinates would report it if they shot one down.

Then again...

Shooting down drug planes

In an interview with Mexico's newspaper, El Universal, Honduran General Rene Osorio Canales says he wants to shoot down drug planes.  This, he says, is a better solution than legalizing some drugs, a measure considered by Central American Presidents at a recent meeting.  Osorio rejected Guatemalan President Perez's attempts to get legalization discussed because "the youth would have more freedom (presumably to use drugs) and we would be more polluted (presumably with drugs)."  Given that less than a month ago, on March 30, Osorio seemed to be against shooting down suspected drug planes as being illegal under international law, this change of heart is interesting.

Shooting down drug planes is not a new suggestion.  Here he's echoing Juan Orlando Hernandez and others in the Honduran Congress who, because of their political aspirations, are anxious to be seen as hard-line anti-drug without actually having such a legislative record.  Juan Orlando Hernandez first embraced this strategy after a meeting with US officials in the United States.

Nor is shooting down drug planes a new suggestion in the world.  Its been done, at least twice in the Dominican Republic in recent years, but only after trying to force the planes to land.  Likewise, the United States has encouraged the military of Colombia and Peru to adopt such anti-drug plans.

In his interview with El Universal, Osorio maintained the polite fiction that following and forcing down the drug planes was already the policy of the Honduran Air Force.  In reality, the Honduran Air Force does not intercept planes and force them to land at a controlled airport, or at least, they've never publicly reported a success at doing that.  This was the policy from the 1980s to at least 2004 when a drug plane they fired warning shots at, then crashed in the department of Lempira.  They report following drug planes, but they have not reported successfully forcing one to land at a controlled airport in the last 8 years.

Osorio, at least, realizes that legal changes must happen before Honduras could actually legally shoot down a plane suspected of carrying a cargo of drugs.  Brian E. Foont, in a review of the law and international incidents published in 2007 in The Journal of Air Law and Commerce goes over the state of law regarding the downing of civilian aircraft.  There's this international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation or Chicago Convention.  The Convention neither bans, nor permits the shooting down of civilian aircraft but sets up that each nation's airspace is sovereign, and that it is international case law and reports of groups like the ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization) that establish the current norms about how civilian aircraft may be treated by national military forces.

In 1986, the ICAO, proposed adding  amendment 3bis to the Chicaco Convention which reads in part:

The contracting states recognize that every state must refrain from resorting to the use of military weapons against civil aircraft in flight, and that in case of interception, the lives of persons on board and the safety of aircraft must not be endangered.

The amendment goes on to include that every nation can request aircraft violating its airspace to land at a designated place, and establishes the requirement that aircraft obey such orders.  This amendment was not ratified by the membership in the ICAO until 1998. Interestingly, the US and Peru, both of whom advocate shooting down suspected drug planes (outside of US air space) are not signatories of Article 3bis.  Foont  concludes that a rule prohibiting the use of force against civilian aircraft is at the cusp of being established international law, but that its not quite there yet. 

Foont, in the above referenced article, also reviews the law with respect to the shooting down of suspected drug planes.  He notes that the US, while not having this policy for US airspace, encourages it in partner countries such as Peru and Colombia, both of which have "accidentally" shot down civilian missionary flights as part of such a drug interdiction program.  The US has even gone so far as to indemnify and hold harmless any US functionary aiding countries that the President of the US has found to have an adequate civilian safety assurance program as part of such a drug interdiction program, and this includes the programs in these two countries.

Osorio makes the argument that Honduras needs the US to provide upgrades to its air force in order to implement such a policy, specifically Bell 212 helicopters and Super Tucano aircraft, which thus far, the US has declined to provide through its military aid to Honduras.  Its current fleet of aging Tucano aircraft Osorio claims are too slow to intercept the modern civilian aircraft being use, and its F5 fleet is too broken down to be flown that often.

Osorio gives us no clues as to why he's had an apparent change of heart with regard to the interception and downing of suspected civilian drug aircraft.  However, such a program in other Latin American countries has inevitably led to innocent civilian deaths. 

Right now Honduras has no viable way to detect and follow suspected civilian drug aircraft, so this is a hypothetical future that is only possible with a large scale infusion of money and equipment to the Honduran Air Force.  They lack local radar, and apparently do not have access to the US Southern Command's radar network such as the arrangement that the military of the Domincan Republic have, where their soldiers watch over radar consoles at US Southcom and dispatch Dominican Air Force planes to intercept detected drug flights. 

While interdiction of planes worked in places like the Dominican Republic, greatly reducing the amount of cocaine literally dropping from the air, that effect was short lived.  The drug traffickers responded by switching to water transport and continue to use the Dominican Republic as a transit point. 

Why should we expect a different outcome in Honduras?

Bogeymen

A bogeyman is sometimes defined as an imaginary monster used to frighten children. That definition seems particularly apt for the kind of analytic thinking that takes place in Honduras's government and Armed Forces.

On March 26, at 5:45 pm, some quantity of armed men attacked and shot up a military truck traveling the rural roads near Sonaguera, Colon, wounding five soldiers of the 15th and 16th Battalions. These soldiers were deployed as part of Operation Xatruch II.

The assignation of blame for this attack is like a Rorschach test of everyone's favorite bogeyman.

Juan Carlos Fúnez, Deputy Defense Minister, told Lobo's Cabinet Meeting on Tuesday that the truck was driving back from investigating if campesinos were stealing palm fruit from a plantation near there when approximately 30 armed individuals attacked them. According to Fúnez, these same armed individuals are creating disturbances and scaring the residents of Sonaguera.

According to El Tiempo's earliest coverage of the story, the military spokesperson for Operation Xatruch II attributed the attack to "campesino groups" fighting over land rights. This land rights battle explanation was then picked up by the foreign press. Blame General Rene Osorio for this one. He told the press that he suspected the campesinos were being armed and trained by instructors brought in from Nicaragua and Venezuela. No word on how he knows this, but he's repeated this explanation for violence in the region many times.

InSight Crime, in its reporting, noted that this part of Honduras is part of key drug trafficking routes in Honduras and believes it possible that drug traffickers who run drugs overland from Colon and Olancho to Guatemala were responsible. They cite both domestic and foreign drug runners as possibilities.

In the end, Porfiro Lobo Sosa had the last word, however. At the Cabinet meeting, Lobo corrected Fúnez's characterization of the attackers as "campesino groups" saying:

Those aren't campesinos; this has nothing to do with agricultural conflict; these are the same as the others, this same band is the one that was in San Franciso de La Paz, and they move between Olancho and Colon

Lobo says the crime was committed by drug traffickers.

No word yet on how Lobo Sosa knows that.

Permanent Policing by the Military?

On Tuesday at the weekly cabinet meeting, the Honduran government voted to extend the state of emergency declaration that allows the Honduran military to exercise most police functions.

Now Porfirio Lobo Sosa is talking about making it permanent.

The role of the Honduran military is spelled out in the constitution, in article 272:

The Armed Forces of Honduras, is a permanent national institution, essentially professional, apolitical, obedient and not deliberative.

They were instituted to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic, preserve peace, the rule of the Constitution, the principles of free elections and alternation in office of President of the Republic.

They will cooperate with the National Police in maintaining public order in order to guarantee the free exercise of suffrage, custody, transportation and supervision of election materials and other safety aspects of the process, the President of the Republic shall make available the Armed Forces for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal from one month (1) before the election, until they are decided.

This is the mission as defined in the constitution, but over the years the military has gained control of other budgets and other institutions, so that today it controls many of the strategic sectors of Honduras.

These include the merchant marine, immigration, intelligence, civil aviation, and most recently, forestry. The military also has a strategic partner in communications, where retired General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez was appointed head of HONDUTEL.

Only during the days of military dictatorship that preceded the 1982 constitution has the Armed Forces had a hand in more parts of the government. We've commented previously on this mission creep (here, here, and here).

And now, Porfirio Lobo Sosa would like to make their policing function permanent.

Clearly,there are new challenges that we have, new realities too. I am going to arrange in my government that the military participate in giving security to the people; this will be my fight. Its doesn't matter to me if that requires constitutional reforms.

With timing that could not have been anticipated, Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs, in a Congressional hearing today called for Latin American countries to carefully evaluate the use of their military to control organized crime and drug trafficking, because there always exists the possibility of human rights violations.

And it wasn't just Stockton.

In the same hearings, Carmen Lomelin, United States Ambassador to the OAS told Congress:

I can understand the frustration of the president (of Guatemala, Otto) Perez Molino and others, but I believe that this decision (to use the military) needs to be taken with much care, because of the past history. For obvious reasons you need to observe the history of the Americas and their relation with the military.

Stockton added:

The challenges in citizen security are better confronted by the institutions charged with citizen security.

In Honduras, it is the police who are constitutionally supposed to be in charge of citizen security.

Stockton pointed to Colombia under Uribe as an example of what can go wrong when you employ the military as police. There, among other things, the military showed off "rebels" it had caught and killed. Except they turned out to be Colombian citizens murdered by the military, some after being kidnapped, others killed during operations.

Stockton said:

If the military violates human rights they lose popular support, which makes it harder to reach the final objective.

He called Colombia under Uribe a good example of how human rights violations take root. He acknowledged that under Santos Colombia has begun to prosecute human rights violations.

And it is not just foreigners that think permanently militarizing policing is a bad idea. Retired General Mario Hung Pacheco, former commander of the Honduran Army, said

That's a tough topic and you have to handle it well. but it is not within the possibilities for reforming the role of the armed forces; they have their specific missions specified in the constitution of the Republic and one of those is to support the Police when there is a national or regional state of emergency.

General Rene Osorio Canales, the current head of the Honduran Armed Forces also spoke against the idea:

We need to do a detailed study before giving more public security powers to the Armed Forces.

But Tiempo reports Lobo Sosa replied:

This will cause deep debate...but we should have it and in some way make the constitutional changes necessary so that the Armed Forces participate in giving security to the people.

Give the man credit for sticking to his guns; in this case, all too literally. But maybe it would be worth noticing that even the military doesn't want to continue on this path.