Honduras probing ‘Contras’

Press, 16 January 1985, Page 6

Honduras probing ‘Contras’

NZPA-Reuter Tegucigalpa Honduran Army investigators have found evidence that United States-backed Nicaraguan guerrillas have been engaged in death squad killings in Honduras, senior Army officers say. The officers, who declined to be named, are close to an eight-month investigation of more than 247 kidnappings, killings, and disappearances since 1980.

They said that members of Right-wing guerrilla groups fighting to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government were believed to have killed at least 18 Hondurans and an unknown number of Nicaraguans and Salvadoreans.

Many of the victims had been suspected of running arms to Left-wing guerrillas -fighting to overthrow El Salvador’s United Statesbacked Government, #they said.

The Reagan Administration, explaining military and financial aid to the Nicaraguan guerrillas, has said that it needed to cut what it said was a flow of arms from Nicaragua’s Left-wing Government to the Salvadorean guerrillas. The officers said they were not sure whether the United States Central Intelligence Agency — which has been providing arms, training and finance to the guerrillas, known as “Contras” — knew about the death squad killings. “If the C.I.A. did know, it is pretty damning,” one top officer said. “But if it did not it is almost worse because it shows how little control they have over the ‘Contras’.” The “Contras” are estimated to number 15,000. The biggest of their groups, called the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, has

bases on the Honduran side of the frontier. F.D.N.’s leader, Adolfo Calero, said by telephone from his home in Miami, that he knew nothing about F.D.N. fighters taking part in death squad activities in Honduras. “We are not Honduran policemen. This is an internal matter for Honduran authorities,” he said. An official report on the Army investigation published on December 29 said that an increase in political violence in Honduras was “a probable result of a vendetta among armed groups of Leftist and Rightist irregulars, not Hondurans, who ... have operated clandestinely in our territory.” The officers said that the investigation also’ had found evidence that Salvadorean Rightist and Leftist groups had /siken part in several killings and some of the

disappearances of between 60 and 80 Salvadoreans in Honduras. They said that some of the victims of Nicaraguan “Contras” had been tortured. “They would pick them up, question them, and sometimes torture and kill them,” one officer said. Last month the United States Council on Hemispheric Affairs said that the “Contras” were responsible for some of the worst human rights violations in Latin America. The council, a non-profit organisation with offices in New York and Washington, said in a report, “Over 880 non-combatants have been killed by the ‘Contras’ after capture ... The ‘Contras’ have killed, tortured, raped, mutilated, and abducted civilians.” •El Salvador’s Presidency Minister, Mr-(Julio Rey Prendes, said

that the C.I.A. had uncovered a Right-wing plot to kill him. The plot had been planned by a former security chief of Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, leader of the Extreme-Right Nationalist Republican Alliance, he said. The C.I.A. had informed him of the plot last month, saying it was planned in Guatemala. The latest string of politi-cally-related murders here come at a time of bitter political in-fighting between the Rightist-dominated Legislative Assembly and the Duarte Administration. The divisions are over an electoral law for Legislative Assembly elections in March, the 1985 budget, and peace talks between Government representatives and rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.