2009 Honduras coup `was illegal,' says U.S. ambassador in leaked cables

Source: McClatchy

Posted on Monday, 11.29.10
2009 Honduras coup `was illegal,' says U.S. ambassador in leaked cables

The U.S. ambassador to Honduras said the 2009 coup in Honduras was `clearly illegal,' according to cables released by WikiLeaks.
BY TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy News Service

MEXICO CITY -- The events surrounding the June 2009 coup in Honduras was a carnival of illegal actions by every branch of government, including the successor of the deposed president, a diplomatic cable signed by the U.S. ambassador says.

The cable, part of the quarter-million confidential diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks began to make public Sunday, offered a harsh critique of the ruling class in Honduras during and after the coup, the first in Latin America since the end of the Cold War. In the cable, Ambassador Hugo Llorens, a veteran Cuban-American diplomat, wrote that he'd studied the legal and constitutional issues that led up to the June 28 morning when some 100 soldiers dragged President Manuel Zelaya out of bed and flew him to Costa Rica.

Llorens wrote that Zelaya's foes claimed he sought to alter constitutional articles considered ``carved in stone'' and acted improperly in ousting the military chief. Llorens said, though, that the charges were never aired in a proper legal fashion.

``Although a case could well have been made against Zelaya for a number of the above alleged constitutional violations, there was never any formal, public weighing of the evidence nor any semblance of due process,'' the cable dated July 23, 2009, said.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/29/1947782/2009-honduras-coup-was-illegal.html

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The Snakes Sleep: Attacks against the Media and Impunity in Honduras
Written by Sandra Cuffe
Tuesday, 23 November 2010 17:21

In Honduras, there is a particular quote by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano that has been adopted into the country's rich lexicon of idioms: “Justice is like snakes. They only bite the barefoot.”

Of the thousands of human rights violations committed in Honduras since the coup in June 2009, in most cases the only serious investigations have been carried out by the grassroots organizations involved with the Human Rights Platform and the resistance movement. Very few charges have been laid against the human rights violators who ordered and carried out illegal detentions, kidnappings, beatings, torture, rape, and extrajudicial executions.

At the international level, however, there have recently been positive signals that spark the hope that justice may one day be served. Last week, the International Criminal Court announced that preliminary investigations are underway to determine whether or not the Court has jurisdiction over a case related to Honduras. Essentially, the Court is investigating whether or not war crimes and/or crimes against humanity have been committed in Honduras since the coup on June 28, 2009.

Also earlier this month, Honduras faced its Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations, a process that each UN member State undergoes every four years. Tellingly, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia did not attend because they do not recognize the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who was elected President in November 2009 in highly controversial elections that many contend were simply the prolongation of the illegitimate rule of the civic and military authorities that coordinated the overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, El Salvador and Ecuador explicitly clarified that they do not recognize the government of Honduras, but intervened in the Review process nonetheless in order to support the human rights of the Honduran people.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2795-the-snakes-sleep-attacks-against-the-media-and-impunity-in-honduras

I guess Hillary didn't read it. "I have no recollection." may be her response.

both fought for the US calling it a coup - like the rest of the world. For a while it looked like Obama would side with them - he clearly was torn, as he initially did not immediately recognize the coupsters as the legitimate government. That was when I first knew hat our foreign policy really hadn't made the huge shift that I had thought it would. (I realized later, that it was Kerry's words, not Obama's that made me believe that we could finally change. - At this point, I think that on foreign policy, the real chance for change was 2004.)

Honduras... School of the Americas connection to military coup!

School of the Americas Connection

The crisis in Honduras began when the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for the opinion poll in a new Constitution. President Zelaya fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, who refused to step down. The heads of all branches of the Honduran armed forces quit in solidarity with Vasquez. Vasquez, however, refused to step down, bolstered by support in Congress and a Supreme Court ruling that reinstated him. Vasquez remains in control of the armed forces.

Vasquez, along with other military leaders, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). According to a School of the Americas Watch database compiled from information obtained from the US government, Vasquez studied in the SOA at least twice: once in 1976 and again in 1984.

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996. The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis. When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them. Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy has stated, "The U.S. Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world."

The School of the Americas has a long, tortured history in Honduras. According to School of the Americas Watch, "In 1975, SOA Graduate General Juan Melgar Castro became the military dictator of Honduras. From 1980-1982 the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates)."

More:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5947188#5947329

It's interesting how people, even progressives, can blind themselves to the obvious.

it wasn't a coup, it wasn't illegal and we had nothing to do with it!

was the false claim -- repeated over and over again -- that Zelaya was attempting to change the constitution, when in fact, he was attempting to conduct a poll to set up a commission to study the issue. Without that lie, their theory fell to pieces.

according to an article today in golpista newspaper El Heraldo of Teguz.

He will have a powerful case with the cable from Llorens.


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Was mildly surprised to learn Llorens is still in Teguz. Golpista El Heraldo yesterday published (in Spanish) the entire cable from Llorens; it is lengthy and analyzes the illegal actions before, during and after the coup.

When Llorens went on "vacation" in the midst of the coup, Michelletti said "I hope he never comes back," but he did. With the revelation of the cable, Llorens will be shunned diplomatically by the lobo regime and expect he will be moving on.

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Just found the entire cable in English. It was published by the golpista newspaper La Prenas of San Pedro Sula. (pdf format)

http://www.laprensa.hn/var/laprensa_site/storage/original/application/aa780a8ee6d5cf42ea4004daa09b4f8b.pdf

His own behavior was anything but forthright and courageous during this dirty business, but it is better seeing his comments to Shannon than one might have expected.

Funny, isn't it, about Llorens being a Cuban "exile" product himself, while Alberto Montaner, a rip-roaring Cuban "exile" right-wing reactionary, and Cuban rabid right-wing "exile" Otto Reich, a Reagan/Bush Contra illegal propaganda machine, (operating the Office of Public Diplomacy in the State State Deparatment), were both in close advisory contact with the golpistas in Honduras throughout.

came when he suddenly went on "vacation" to Washington not long after the coup. That was when goriletti remarked publicly "I hope he never returns."

Recall that in Latin American forum Llorens caught a lot of flak.

Don't think his tenure in Teguz will be long now. Expect the oligarchs who incited the coup, the golpista media, the golpista generals and Lobito will be ganging up on Llorens.

without taking a small airplane.

I remember he disappeared when things were really hot. It seemed so sneaky. Didn't know Goriletti hated him even back then. He's gotta be foaming at the mouth today!

I wonder who it was in the administration dismissed his comments so lightly. Sounds as if _Bush's people were still running things there.

http://www.latribuna.hn.nyud.net:8090/web2.0/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hugo-y-pepe.jpg http://radiohrn.hn.nyud.net:8090/website/sites/default/files/imagecache/interna/610x_2.jpg

Best friends forever, Lobo and Llorens? Probably not!

Zelaya has no claim to the office now, as his term ended almost a year ago.

That would do.

Compared to their constitution, ours is practically a Haiku... If you haven't read the full leaked cable, they whole affair is somewhat summed up for all of its messiness.

His approval all but killed any attempts to reinstate the legitimate leader of Honduras.

Thank you, President Obama, for continuing our putrid, anti-left policy in Latin America. :puke:

Obama sucks.

a region where democratic leaders were routinely deposed during the past century and civil-military relations occasionally flare into open conflict."

Notice how the article scrupulously avoids mentioning the predominant U.S. role in these events, thereby keeping the casual reader in the dark about important historical events. This is how they lie through omission.

The Paraguayan Foreign Ministry has summoned the U.S. ambassador, Liliana Ayala, to explain why the U.S. State Department asked the embassy to provide:

Biometric data on President Lugo -- including fingerprints, photos, iris scan and genetic information.

At the time Lugo, a leftie, was running for president.

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In nearby Argentina, the pot is simmering because the Wikileaks documents include a cable from Hillary to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires requesting information on the "mental state" of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

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In Venezuela, the pot is simmering too after cables revealed the State Department had worked to "isolate" Hugo Chavez.

(edit typo in name)

considering so many of the current leaders have had lives badly injured by the US-support fascist monsters running their countries when these people were younger.

This won't surprise them one bit, but it will make this sick, no doubt about it! Hope it goes to add more strength to their growing solidarity, building the Latin America they've all been struggling to see born, without outside interference.

As Evo Morales told one of _Bush's State Department people, they can use partners, not bosses.

WikiLeaks Honduras: US Busted on Support of Coup
Thursday, 2 December 2010, 1:01 pm
Column: Robert Naiman

By July 24, 2009, the US government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009. The US embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with the subject, "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," asserting that "there is no doubt" that the events of June 28 "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup." The embassy listed arguments being made by supporters of the coup to claim its legality, and dismissed them thus: "None ... has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution." The Honduran military clearly had no legal authority to remove President Manuel Zelaya from office or from Honduras, the embassy said, and their action - the embassy described it as an "abduction" and "kidnapping" - was clearly unconstitutional.

It is inconceivable that any top US official responsible for US policy in Honduras was not familiar with the contents of the July 24 cable, which summarized the assessment of the US embassy in Honduras on key facts that were politically disputed by supporters of the coup regime. The cable was addressed to Tom Shannon, then assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs; Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser; and Dan Restrepo, senior director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council. The cable was sent to the White House and to Secretary of State Clinton.

But despite the fact that the US government was crystal clear on what had transpired, the US did not immediately cut off all aid to Honduras except "democracy assistance," as required by US law.

Instead, a month after this cable was sent, the State Department, in its public pronouncements, pretended that the events of June 28 - in particular, "who did what to whom" and the constitutionality of these actions - were murky and needed further study by State Department lawyers, despite the fact that the State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh, knew exactly "who did what to whom" and that these actions were unconstitutional at least one month earlier. The State Department, to justify its delay in carrying out US law, invented a legal distinction between a "coup" and a "military coup," claiming that the State Department's lawyers had to determine whether a "military coup" took place, because only that determination would meet the legal threshold for the aid cutoff.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1012/S00018/wikileaks-honduras-us-busted-on-support-of-coup.htm

Former Honduran President Zelaya says U.S. knew about 2009 coup

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC : Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Monday said that one document released by Wikileaks demonstrates that the United States knew in advance of the coup attempt against him on June 28, 2009, local media reported. "The complicity of the United States is demonstrated as it knew in advance about the plans and execution of the coup d'etat and remained silent," Zelaya said in a statement from the Dominican Republic where he lives since being overthrown.

Zelaya referred to a report dated July 24, 2009 from Hugo Llorens, the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. In the document, Zelaya said, Llorens reported that there were no doubts that the Honduran Army, the Supreme Court and the Congress were conspiring against Zelaya's government in an unconstitutional and illegal move.

Llorens allegedly remarked that despite the allegations against Zelaya, the rise to power of Roberto Micheletti, who took the helm of the Latin American country, was illegal. Zelaya was overthrown as he attempted to hold a national poll to extend his mandate.

However, the report from the U.S. Ambassador - as cited by Zelaya - indicates that there were no arguments to justify the coup against Zelaya as they lacked of substantial validity according to the Honduran constitution. The former President said that the report showed that the U.S. was aware of the coup but did not act against it.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-95064.html

You see, these cables also serve to honor some folks in the biz

Some folks in the State Dept were able to document realities behind the curtain, if you will....