“I will submit my resignation to the National Congress as a deputy and as secretary of Congress. to strip me of any kind of armor I may have and I am investigated,” the deputy, brother of former president Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a coup d’état in 2009, told reporters.
After giving statements to the prosecutor’s office, Carlos Zelaya He said he had fallen “into a trap” by admitting that in 2013 he participated in a meeting attended by a well-known Honduran drug trafficker and offered “a contribution to the electoral campaign” of the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre).
“That meeting never had the approval of President Zelaya, he never had the approval or support, much less knowledge of that meeting, nor President Castro, it was a unilateral meeting on my part,” he said outside the Technical Agency of Criminal Investigation, in Comayaguela.
His statement to the prosecutor and the press came three days after The leftist president announced her decision to cancel the extradition treaty with the United States, which allowed the extradition and imprisonment of 50 Hondurans linked to drug trafficking, including powerful politicians. The next day he said he did so to prevent the United States from using him against military personnel loyal to it and facilitating an attempted coup.
“A plan is being hatched against my government,” the president said Thursday, implicitly referring to the United States.
Mentioned in the New York trial
Castro made his decision in response to “interference” by Washington’s ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Laura Dogu, who criticized a meeting between Defense Minister Jose Manuel Zelaya and the head of the Armed Forces, General Roosevelt Hernandez, with Venezuelan Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino Lopez.
“Sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela,” Dogu criticized.
Carlos Zelaya is the father of the Honduran Minister of Defense and was mentioned last March in the trial in which Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in New York for drug trafficking.
“If tomorrow the United States government believes it has sufficient data or evidence to bring a case against me, I can present myself before the American justice system tomorrow,” added Congressman Zelaya.
Honduras’ Attorney General Johel Zelaya, who took office last November, sent a team to listen in on the hearings in Hernandez’s trial in New York and to investigate any Hondurans who were mentioned.
“We will continue our investigations, we will not rest until the truth prevails in Honduras and justice is served to the Honduran people. Whoever it may be!” said the Attorney General after the statement by Deputy Zelaya.
Last August, the prosecutor announced that he would call to testify some 36 people who were mentioned in the trial and one of them was Carlos Zelaya.
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