Honduras wanted to make an impression in its fight against drugs. The authorities thus cremated on Saturday more than 3.3 tons of cocaine out of the 14 seizures in the country since the beginning of the year.
“It is the biggest cremation ever carried out here in the premises of the military police”, welcomed the spokesman of the military police, Mario Rivera. “This drug reduced to ashes is a direct attack against the criminal organizations” of drug trafficking, for his part declared the spokesman of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Carlos Morazan.
President’s brother sentenced in the United States
This demonstration in front of the cameras intends to reinforce the rehabilitation campaign led by President Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose full brother Tony Hernandez, a 42-year-old ex-MP, was sentenced in March to life imprisonment by a US federal court for having shipped some 185 tonnes of cocaine to the United States. Since 2014, when he took office for the first of his two terms, the president has installed an air, sea and land shield in an attempt to neutralize the drug cartels, with the support of the US administration in charge of drug control (DEA).
However, traffickers arrested or extradited to the United States by the Hernandez government have questioned the president’s entourage, claiming that bribes were paid. For his part, the president castigates what he considers false testimonies of drug lords seeking revenge for the war waged against them.