09/15/2024–|Last updated: 09/15/202406:30 (Mecca time)
Thousands of people demonstrated in the Honduran capital on Saturday in support of President Xiomara Castro, who late last month canceled an extradition treaty with the United States.
The protest followed the release of a video clip showing the president’s brother-in-law meeting drug traffickers with whom he was suspected of negotiating to finance his 2013 election campaign.
Protesters outside the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalba, chanted at the president: “Xiumara, you are not alone.”
In late August, the president of Honduras decided to cancel an extradition treaty with the United States, saying she feared it would be used against the military loyal to her and facilitate a coup attempt against her. She denounced the agreement and “American interference” in her country’s affairs.
The president again expressed her concerns in a speech to her supporters, who travelled to the capital from various parts of the country by bus.
I will not allow
“I will not allow them to stage another coup,” Castro said, flanked by her husband, Manuel Zelaya, and members of her cabinet.
Her husband, Zelaya, was ousted from the presidency in 2009 in a military coup backed by the business elite and the political right.
But the Honduran opposition accuses the president of canceling the extradition treaty to protect members of his government and his family, and thousands of opponents staged a protest march in the capital earlier this month.
Three days after announcing the cancellation of the treaty, the leftist president’s son-in-law, Representative Carlos Zelaya, resigned before prosecutors after meeting with drug traffickers in 2013, as he revealed in a video leaked by a specialized website, and his son, Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya, also resigned.
According to Agence France-Presse, the extradition treaty between Honduras and the United States was a key tool in the fight against international drug trafficking in the Central American country. Under the agreement, about 50 Hondurans have been extradited to the United States since 2014.