Honduras agrees with US to keep extradition treaty: president

Honduran President Xiomara Castro said Thursday that her surprise decision to end an extradition treaty with the United States was to prevent it from being used in a plot against her government and military leaders.

“A plan is being hatched against my government,” Castro said, a day after announcing the end of the pact that has put powerful drug traffickers in US jails.

Castro said she took the step in response to “interference” by US Ambassador Laura Dogu, who criticized a meeting of senior Honduran officials with Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

Dogu told reporters that she was surprised to see Honduran Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya and military chief General Roosevelt Hernandez sitting next to a “drug trafficker” in Venezuela.

“They attacked the head of the armed forces and our defense minister — an attack that we cannot allow,” Castro said in a speech while inaugurating an electric power project.

“I will not allow extradition to be used to intimidate or blackmail the Honduran armed forces. We’re defending our armed forces,” said the leftist leader.

Castro’s government is a staunch ally of Venezuela, which is under pressure from Washington and other countries following the disputed reelection of President Nicolas Maduro in July.

Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina said that the extradition treaty was being scrapped to prevent it from being used as a “political weapon” against the government.

“A coup attempt could be brewing here right now,” Reina said on a television program.

Military intelligence detected after the US ambassador’s statements that a group of officers was “conspiring” to remove Hernandez, he said.

Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya, president from 2006 to 2009, was overthrown in a military coup supported by business elites and the political right.

The extradition agreement is considered a key tool to dismantle the “narco-state” that, according to US authorities, was built in Honduras when Juan Orlando Hernandez was president from 2014 to 2022.

Fifty Hondurans accused of drug trafficking have been extradited to the United States over the past decade, including ex-president Hernandez, who was sentenced in June in New York to 45 years in prison.