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Summary
This is Part II (Ep. 36) of the three part Drug War Cover-Up series that describes the incidents surrounding the DEA-led drug interdiction operation known as the Ahuas massacre on May 11, 2012.
In Part II, host Karen Spring describes what happened in the weeks and years following the massacre including whether the DEA was held accountable, what happened in Washington, DC in the incident’s aftermath, and 10 years later, how the victims feel about the justice process or lack thereof.
See the Youtube video published by the New York Times narrated at the beginning of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96iR0ICpQZY
Read the report “Collateral Damage of a Drug War The May 11 Killings in Ahuas and the Impact of the U.S. War on Drugs in La Moskitia, Honduras”: https://cepr.net/documents/publications/honduras-2012-08.pdf
Watch U.S. Congressional representative Ilhan Omar questioning the State Department about the massacre: https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1489378251558555649
Transcript
Mattathias Schwartz:
In the early hours of May 11, 2012, a small plane lands in a field outside a remote village in Honduras. A group gathers around the plane and begins unloading 450 kilograms of cocaine that would be worth about $10 million in the US. Elite US drug enforcement agents are about to step in and try to seize the shipment. But not everything goes as planned. What you’re about to see is a drug raid that turned deadly.
Karen Spring:
This is Part II of “The Drug War Cover-Up.” This three-part series focuses on a drug interdiction operation in the eastern region of Honduras called La Moskitia. In Part I, we heard from eyewitnesses and victims of the raid, who described their versions of what happened that night. The incident left four people dead, and three seriously injured. The mission was led by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, and it changed the lives of the victims and their family members forever.
Welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. I’m your host, Karen Spring. In each episode, I will be sharing human rights stories from Honduras and connecting them to global issues and North American policy. Thank you so much for listening.
The voice you heard at the episode’s opening is of US journalist Mattathius Schwartz. He’s narrating a video posted by the New York Times. I’ll link to it in the show notes. The video sort of shows what happened that night in May 2012 when the drug interdiction operation was happening. Let’s listen to more.
Mattathias Schwartz:
This infrared footage was captured from high above by a P-3 surveillance plane operated by the Department of Homeland Security. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the video. It took about five years and a federal lawsuit before the DEA finally released it in August 2017.
At this point, we see the truck with the cocaine driving through a village to a river where there are several boats. About 20 individuals offload the bundles into one of the boats. Meanwhile, US helicopters fly to the scene.
As they approach, most of the drug runners scatter. But a few stay behind to move the drug-filled boat away from the village. About ten minutes later, a US helicopter descends carrying special DEA paramilitary units and Honduran police officers. The remaining traffickers flee the scene.
After deploying the agents, the helicopter uses the air from its blades to push the abandoned boat to shore. About 15 minutes later, a DEA agent and two Honduran officers commandeer the boat with the drugs on it. Their goal is to pilot the boat back to the village to transfer the cocaine into the helicopters. One agent tries to start the engine but it stalls and the boat begins drifting.
Shortly after, a second boat appears. It’s a water taxi. But US agents and the Honduran policeman don’t know this. Sixteen people are on board.
The water taxi swerves directly at the drug agents. The pilot on the water taxi would later say he was terrified by the helicopters and did not intend to steer towards the agents’ boat. The DEA agent and the Honduran officers thought they were under attack.
The two boats collide. There is gunfire. This critical sequence of events has become the subject of a highly contentious dispute.
Karen Spring:
So just to quickly recap: After the passenger boat was fired on by the agents, as Schwartz laid out, there were different versions of what happened that night. The victims and eyewitnesses said that no one was armed and the helicopter, and the agents had no reason to fire at them. But between the DEA, the US State Department, and the Honduran government, the other version was that the Honduran police and the DEA had fired in self-defense. Also, that the DEA was simply supervising the drug interdiction operation.
So approximately two weeks after the highly contested incident took place, there was a lot of outcry from the community of Ahuás, and it was reported in the Honduran press.
Coincidentally, at that time, an educational delegation led by solidarity organizations was just about to arrive to the country. The delegation was made up of mostly US citizens interested in understanding the role of US foreign policy in the country.
Upon arrival to Honduras, I sat all the delegation participants down and told them what had happened in La Moskitia. I proposed that we go there, accompanied by local Indigenous leaders, to investigate what had happened, and also the involvement of the DEA. With all in agreement, and knowing the importance of investigating what had happened, we decided as a group to go.
This is one of the participants of the delegation, talking about the experience from the time of her and the group’s arrival to Honduras, traveling to La Moskitia, and investigating the raid.
Melissa Stiehler:
I’m Melissa Stiehler. I am with the Cross-Border Network for Justice and Solidarity, based out of Kansas City.
We flew in from La Ceiba, and landed in a field where immediately the military was there, very concerned about our presence. Finally, after, you know, discussing things for a while, being interviewed by the military for a while, you know, we were able to take a boat ride in, and then a truck ride in and, and on and on, kind of this journey into this really, really remote area.
The folks that we interviewed, the people that we talked to were, you know, it was this combination of just misery and trauma by this awful experience that had happened, and kind of hoped that anybody would believe them, and that there could possibly be some kind of of justice, because of what had happened to them.
We went into this, we went into these interviews, having been told that there was some kind of botched drug raid, that the DEA was attempting to seize a mass of cocaine, and in the process had committed this massacre against the people in Ahuás. And, you know, the kind of company line coming out of the State Department was that, while they didn’t find drugs on these people, the people shot back, and it justified this kind of massacre. And we interviewed victims who were on the boat, we went to the the crime scene, and kind of tried to place the DEA story according to how the river flows. And in the time of day, or I guess it was during the night, the time of night, and talking to the family members of those who they had murdered. And it just didn’t add up at all. I believe that the people on that boat did not shoot back.
Karen Spring:
After spending several days piecing together what had happened, it became very clear to us that innocent people had been killed. There were never any drugs or weapons on the passenger boat that was fired upon. And the passengers had nothing to do with any sort of drug operation or organized criminal activity.
Once the delegation got back to Tegucigalpa, we asked for a meeting with the US Embassy to discuss our findings and our concerns about what had happened.
Melissa Stiehler:
We met with the Political Counselor, Silvia Eiriz, I think her name is and Jim [James] Kenney, the head of the DEA in Honduras. It was in late May. And we met with him at the Marriott Hotel in the coffee shop in Tegucigalpa. We wanted to hear kind of what they had to say, and how they, you know, we had read newspapers, and we had seen media around this, but we wanted to hear what they had to say for themselves.
And it was incredibly interesting. I mean, you had Silvia, you know, from the embassy, constantly saying, well, we have nothing to do with this. We’re only in an advisory role. Even the investigation afterwards, they said, they’re not doing their own investigation, because they had nothing to do with it, and so why would they investigate the situation? And it was so obviously not true.
We talked with Silvia for a while, the Political Counselor, we talked to her for a while before Jim Kenney got there, and even their version of the story was night and day. It wasn’t the same at all. You know, the Political Counselor saying things like, we have advisors here that are DEA personnel, and we have advisors who are, you know, a detective who’s helping with this investigation, but it’s not us. And the head of the DEA doesn’t make that distinction at all. I mean, he talks about, we asked like, okay, well, who are you actually advising in the task force that they’re working with? These are hired by the DEA, they’re vetted by the DEA, they’re directed by the DEA, they are DEA. There is no differentiation here. Except for perhaps the title that they want to call these people. In actuality, this was a botched DEA mission, and it was clear as day.
Karen Spring:
Here are Jim Kenny’s exact words during our meeting with him. These words were transcribed and later shared with US Congressional offices.
“The Honduran police don’t have a chain of command like most units. They don’t have a lieutenant, captain, major. They report directly to me, the DEA.”
Being such a highly contested dispute, you would think that US authorities, especially the DEA, would carry out an investigation to really understand what happened, including the role that they had played.
But this didn’t occur. Instead, the US Embassy and the DEA left it up to the Honduran authorities to carry out an investigation. I suspect this was intentional. The limited investigative capabilities and the weak political will of Honduran investigative institutions should be of no surprise to anyone, especially the US. An investigation was carried out by the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office. And we found out through our conversation with Jim Kenney, the head of the DEA, that a US police detective would be assisting with the Honduran investigation.
Over a month after the incident, autopsies of the bodies that had already been buried were conducted by Honduran investigators. A US detective was present at those autopsies.
The decomposing bodies were taken from their graves and inspected in front of the families of the victims. Later the families would give descriptive accounts of the horrific and public autopsies.
And just a warning to all listeners: This is a graphic account with disturbing details.
This is Marlen Zelaya Jackson, the sister of Juana Jackson who was killed that night in the massacre.
Marlen Zelaya Jackson (interpreted):
It was around 4pm, and he, the investigator, told me that I needed to be in the cemetery. So I called my Aunt Clara, and she came to my house, and then, together, we went to the cemetery. But the word spread around town and a lot of people showed up there.
They started first with Clara’s son, Hasked. They started to dig up his grave. So when they got down to the casket, it was already late. And the pilot of the helicopter they had arrived in said he didn’t want to fly at night. So they left and went to Puerto Lempira and left two military soldiers there to guard the grave.
Then, the next day, at around 6:00 a.m., they came back, they dug up the young man, and then they went to my sister’s grave. A lot of people started showing up. So many people were there. And they started to dig up her grave. After they pulled her body out, they reviewed it. The person with the vest started cutting the parts of her body that were shot. They would wash them. They did this with her head, her nose, her leg. Then, they opened her up, they took out her heart. And we were watching it all.
Karen Spring:
After the gruesome public autopsies, some of the bodies of the victims were not re-buried correctly. The whole manner in which the autopsies were carried out caused serious distress for their family members, and all those that were watching, particularly because of local beliefs rooted in Indigenous culture and practices.
The Honduran investigations were limited and riddled with problems — another reason why a US investigation would have been essential.
Like in most scandals, especially with strong outcry from local communities in La Moskitia, the issue snowballed. The New York Times and other newspapers reported on the incident shortly after it occurred. In our first trip to La Moskitia, in May 2012, the US delegation that I led ran into Mattathius Schwartz. And you heard his voice at the beginning of this episode. Schwartz was covering the story for The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Then, two months later, in July 2012, another delegation of US citizens came to Honduras to investigate the massacre. Annie Bird from Rights Action, Alex Main from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Kaelyn Forde, a US-based journalist, and myself, returned to La Moskitia to again interview the victims, family members, and local authorities.
The in-depth investigations in July 2012 would be published in a report called “Collateral Damage of a Drug War: The May 11 Killings in Ahuás, and the Impact of the US War on Drugs in La Moskitia, Honduras.”
This is Alex Main, in an interview with Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod, talking about the contentious accounts of what happened in this case.
Alex Main:
You mentioned the killing that occurred of these four boat passengers in La Moskitia back in 2012. And following that, there are a number of us that looked into this, found huge conflicting accounts between what the DEA and the State Department were saying about the incident.
They were saying that the people that had been shot at in this passenger boat were linked to drug trafficking, and had fired first, and that Honduran agents in the mission had simply fired back in self-defense. And they were also saying that the US had minimal responsibility in all this, because their agents from the DEA were simply providing a support and advisory role.
And we had a very different account from people on the ground, and we did an in-depth report on this. We reported back to members of Congress that were very concerned, asked lots of questions of DEA and State Department, and were consistently fed this same version of events that really made the boat passengers responsible for their own deaths.
But there was increasing pressure, and, finally, the Inspector Generals of both the Department of Justice and the Department of State agreed to do a joint investigation of what had occurred and the US’s role and its response to this incident. And it took them three years just to get this investigation rolling, and then three more years to actually get the final results of the investigation.
And part of the reason it took so long, as we found out through an article in the New York Times, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice actually went to the New York Times and said, the DEA is not cooperating with our investigation. We’re asking them for emails, we’re asking them for documents. They’re not giving us anything. And he had to sort of raise a big public uproar about it for the DEA, finally, to turn over documents.
And it’s very, very damning what the review shows. It shows that they knew all along that they were giving a false account to the public and to Congress, that, in fact, the US agents were in charge of this operation, they were leading the operation. And, more than that, they actually ordered the Honduran machine gunner on one of the helicopters to fire at the passenger boat.
And I think it’s worth mentioning that these helicopters equipped with machine guns belonged to the State Department. It gives a sense of how militarized even this sort of civilian agency, supposedly dedicated to diplomacy, has become. They provided these machine gun equipped helicopters for the mission, as well as the contracted pilots through the private contractor, DynCorp.
So, at any rate, they’d given a completely false line. They were responsible, ultimately, for the killings. And there was no evidence, they said there was, but there was no real evidence that the boat passengers had any links to drug trafficking or had opened fire or had weapons at all. In fact, all the evidence pointed simply to the agents, the counter-narcotics police agents, having opened fire on this boat, completely unprovoked. So they’d been feeding a completely false story.
And they would have gotten away with it had there not been so much Congressional pressure, that there’d been this Inspector General review, and had the Inspector General of the Department of Justice not gotten the New York Times and said, hey, they’re not giving us the documents here, and we would never have found out actually what the real facts were around this case.
Karen Spring:
Like Alex Main mentioned, the Inspector General’s report, the redacted report, was published in 2017. At that time, there were some investigations carried out in Honduras against the Honduran police involved in the DEA-led incident.
Originally, three Honduran police were accused, but only one, Alex Ramón Robelo, went to trial, charged with homicide and abuse of authority. He was later absolved of all charges.
No DEA agents have been held accountable. No US agencies involved in the mission have either.
This is Alex Main again.
Alex Main:
Well, this is sort of the enraging thing, I think, from the point of view of all those that have been trying to get some kind of justice around this incident, is that no one’s being held accountable. And even with this Inspector General review, having very clear findings pointing to very clear responsibilities.
In fact, you have a very senior official from the State Department, William Brownfield, who’s the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, which is sort of the drug war arm of the State Department. He played a big role as well in sort of setting up and following through with Plan Colombia and Colombia. So he’s been sort of the drug war czar. He is shown to have actively resisted any kind of outside scrutiny of the DEA in this incident.
You had even the US Ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, she was getting all sorts of questions about what had happened. She wasn’t getting responses from the DEA, they weren’t providing responses. She called on the State Department to launch an investigation, you had the Bureau of Diplomatic Security that launched an investigation, and that asked the DEA for information, and asked for access to the DEA agents that were on this mission. The DEA refused, and they were provided full support from William Brownfield, the senior official from the State Department.
And there are other officials that are named in the report. There’s some very clear responsibilities here, and people clearly identified, and no one has done anything.
Karen Spring:
In the aftermath of May 11, 2012, the publication of the 2017 Inspector General’s report, and then the ten-year anniversary of the massacre, the victims remain with demands for justice. Since that night, their lives have never been the same.
Hilda, the woman that had a gaping hole in her leg, likely from a bullet fired from the mounted gun on the helicopter, that held on to weeds at the side of the Patuca River for several hours, took several months after the incident before she could even stand again. She still has never regained full functioning of her leg.
The two young children of 28-year-old Juana Jackson that was killed on May 11 were raised by Juana’s sister, Marlen Zelaya Jackson. That’s the woman’s voice you heard earlier in this episode.
Lucio Nelson, who was injured in the back and the arm, is now 33-years-old. His arm injury required an operation, and then he had to do several sessions of physiotherapy. Lucio lost the ability to work, particularly in agriculture, and as a result struggles to support his family.
The victims and their family members have never received any compensation for their injuries or the damages they suffered.
It’s been ten years since the massacre occurred. The victims, now represented by the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), continue to meet, recall the night of May 11, and continue to demand a response from US and Honduran authorities.
And the fight is far from over. In both the US and in Honduras, people haven’t given up.
The State Department and the US military face scrutiny for the alleged “War on Drugs” that has produced, in my opinion, many more damaging outcomes than positive ones. And not just in Honduras, but in all of Latin America, and in your communities in the United States and Canada.
In addition, the work of US prosecutors to charge high-level Honduran government officials, including ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, for large-scale drug trafficking, raises even more questions. How was the US fighting the War on Drugs in Honduras, while President Hernández was allegedly trafficking drugs right under their noses?
Alex Main mentioned something important. There are named US officials and agencies that were involved in both the DEA cover-up and the botched drug operation itself. These public officials and US agencies, at a minimum, need to face serious public scrutiny.
Most recently, on February 3, 2022, the Assistant Secretary of State, Todd Robinson, of the State Department, faced hard questions during a public Congressional hearing. US Congressional Representative from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, questioned Robinson about his role in that particular DEA operation. Representative Omar asks some hard questions.
Here’s a clip of that particular part of the hearing.
Ilhan Omar:
Mr. Robinson, is it true that combating impunity and building up the rule of law in Central America is a priority for the United States?
Todd Robinson:
Yes, it is.
Ilhan Omar:
Are you familiar with the 2012 DEA operation in Honduras that we call Operation Anvil and many Hondurans call the Ahuás Massacre?
Todd Robinson:
I am.
Ilhan Omar:
In this operation American DEA agents participated in an operation that resulted in the murder of four Indigenous Hondurans, including a pregnant woman. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, which you lead today, provided operational support, including the helicopters, from which the fatal rounds were fired from.
We are not talking about the massacres that are well known that occurred in Guatemala and El Salvador in the ‘80s. But we are talking about something that took place in 2012.
In 2017, a report by the Inspectors General of the State Department and Justice found that the DEA was not only involved in the shooting, but lied to both Congress and the State Department to cover it up. That report also found that the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement agency, which you lead, was involved in both the massacre and the cover-up.
You were in the INL in 2012 when the massacre happened, and you were the ambassador to Guatemala in 2017 when the OIG report came out. What was your involvement during the massacre and the investigation?
Todd Robinson:
I gave a testimony, I would suspect. I don’t remember, but I think I spoke to investigators, both DEA and Department of State investigators about the operation.
Ilhan Omar:
And what did you testify to? Do you remember, can you recall?
Todd Robinson:
I don’t, I don’t, I mean, I would have to, I would have to go back and look at the report and look at what our INL statements were, I don’t remember exactly what we testified to.
Ilhan Omar:
And is it accurate to say that you had direct involvement in this massacre?
Todd Robinson:
I would say that there were a number of us in the Bureau who knew the operation was going on, and were supporting both the Embassy and the other agency in this operation.
Ilhan Omar:
So you were indirectly involved but didn’t have a direct involvement in the actual massacres, what you are saying?
Todd Robinson:
Well, having direct involvement in the actual massacre would put me in a boat, I think, in a river in Honduras. So, in that respect, no. But as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the time, I was involved in the planning of the operation.
Ilhan Omar:
And, to your knowledge, what were the consequences for the individuals that were involved in this massacre? Were either Americans or Hondurans charged and convicted of the crime?
Todd Robinson:
I would have to, again, have to go back and look at the record. I just I don’t remember.
Ilhan Omar:
Okay. I’ll refresh your memory. Only one Honduran was charged, but was acquitted to this day. There are no people who have been held actually accountable for that massacre. Do you know if there is any compensation or reparations provided to the victims of this massacre?
Todd Robinson:
I don’t know. Again, I would have to check. I mean, I think we can, I think I can find out, but I don’t know offhand.
Ilhan Omar:
Okay. And so in your role, and again, to our previous question about combating impunity and pushing for the rule of law, how can we have credibility when there has been impunity for Americans and Hondurans and others involved in the Northern Triangle who have had agents who murder with impunity?
Todd Robinson:
Well, I think it would be a mistake to tar everything that the United States Government does in the region by one unfortunate operation. The fact is, the United States government today continues to be the partner of choice for the countries in the region on issues like rule of law, promotion of democracy, and support for democratic institutions.
Ilhan Omar:
And you’re saying there is credibility…
Chairman:
The gentlelady’s time has expired.
Ilhan Omar:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Karen Spring:
And while Representative Omar asked some important and hard questions about the War on Drugs, accountability, and the US role in the Central American region, the victims of the Ahuás Massacre continue without answers. This is Marlen Zelaya Jackson, the sister of Juana, who was killed on May 11, 2012.
Marlen Zelaya Jackson (interpreted):
For me, I’m still upset about what happened to my sister. Over ten years have passed, and we haven’t heard anything. Everyone else, the other family members, asked me what is happening, what news I have about the case. Nothing. The DEA personnel have been basically declared innocent, and they have washed their hands of the issue. But the orphaned children, others with bullet injuries and hand injuries, Hilda with a bad leg, all of the victims, all of us demand justice.
Karen Spring:
This year was the ten-year anniversary of the massacre in Ahuás. There’s still so much that has to be done about this particular case. And although this is one better known example of the DEA’s behavior in Honduras, the cost of the Global War on Drugs is high for many communities around Latin America and the globe.
This was Part II of a three-part series called The Drug War Cover-Up. Stay tuned for Part III, which will delve more into the Global War on Drugs, its consequences, and the purpose it serves.
Thank you so much to our listeners and to our donors for keeping this show going. Show notes can be found at HondurasNow.org. This is Karen Spring, signing off for now. Hasta pronto.