Honduran Minister of Security: “Corruption in Public Institutions Must Be Tackled Immediately”

He returned to Honduras at the end of 2021 after spending five years in exile, after former President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) removed him from office as chief of the National Police. General Ramón Sabillón returned to take over as minister of security in the government of President Xiomara Castro. One of his first public actions was to arrest Hernandez in compliance with the order issued by a Honduran judge following an extradition request made by the United States government for drug trafficking offences.

Sabillón found a country that had been kneeling for years, whose state organized crime and corruption had completely permeated. Prosecutors in New York who investigated JOH, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández and other politicians involved in drug trafficking have said that Honduras was a mafia state. Sabillón described it as something very close to the failed state.

In an exclusive interview, Infobae asked Sabillón where to start in a country like Honduras. For now, he says, the Police have intervened more drug laboratories than in previous years and are trying to dislead criminal organizations that inherit the big drug trafficking clans before they get stronger. Of those heirs of the big drug traffickers, he says they are a “mix” of politicians, gang members, judicial operators, military and businessmen.

He believes that comprehensive cleansing is necessary throughout the State and that this should take place “with criminal proceedings, in a pragmatic way” and include the public forces, the judicial system and the Public Prosecutor's Office. He also called for a legal reform that would give the police the ability to direct investigations of crimes committed by gangs, a power that the Hernández government transferred to the Armed Forces: “The previous government wanted to eliminate the police or put them on an administrative level,” Sabillón says.

From a more personal reflection, the general says that he suppressed his emotions on February 15, when he arrested Juan Orlando Hernández to take him to the cell where he is still awaiting his extradition to the United States. This is part of the conversation (edited for clarity).

- What is the current situation of drug trafficking after the fall of the big clans and the imprisonment of former President Juan Orlando Hernández?

-Whenever these criminal mafias or cartels move, there are others who seek to position themselves. We are at the midpoint of intervention so that the State takes control and prevents victimization or that the treatment of crime will not end in an outbreak of violence in which there will be innocent victims in this conflict. We are preventing other cartels from taking control, because there is a criminal resistance to abandon and there are others pushing to move, but we are conducting a very rapid execution according to the law.

- What forces are trying to get in: are they remnants of old groups, corrupt members of the security forces, gangs?

-There is a mix of several factors. We are going to give an investigative response to all the actors involved, whether gang, police, ex-military, ex-politician, or any justice operator involved in the issue, or from the business sector, which is the other field, we will give an investigative response and we will address it; from the procedural point of view we seek effectiveness, that they be investigated and judged by the corresponding instances, and through this to intervene in the other crimes that are shaped around drug trafficking, such as money laundering.

- Are we talking about groups similar to Los Valle or Los Cachiros, with large operational capacities and important territorial control or are they smaller groups?

-They're smaller groups. The advantage is that they have become disconfigured and deconcentrated. With a new police team and the approach of a new operational dynamic, these clans have been weakened and those that exist are fledgling, but we don't let them grow either. One of the strategies is eradication, which is early intervention. We have done more interventions at the same time than in other years and we are even exceeding full years. It used to be invisible and today we have dismantled laboratory structures, thus weakening them from the outset. There is an issue that will take longer, which is the prevention of drug use, but that also goes through other bodies of the State.

(It was during Sabillón's tenure as head of the National Police, between 2013 and 2014, that police intelligence units discovered and intervened the first drug laboratories in Honduras. One of them was operated near a village called La Iguala, in the department of Lempira, where Juan Orlando Hernández originated. Preliminary investigations that the Public Prosecutor's Office refused to follow indicated that Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández was related to that laboratory. A US judicial investigation also revealed that the former president partnered with drug trafficker Giovanny Fuentes to profit from a drug laboratory in Choloma, in the north of the country).

- Is drug trafficking the main challenge you encountered when President Xiomara Castro appointed you as minister of security?

-Drug trafficking and its influence on the domestic market. The second is the co-responsibility that we have with other countries in the area in terms of operations, planning, and on the issue of extraditions that have a lot of emphasis on the criminal structures of the country. There is also extortion and the third element is homicide. These are the issues in which we need to intervene immediately. The issue of corruption in all public institutions is a very sensitive issue that must also be addressed immediately.

- Judicial proceedings in the United States against Honduran drug traffickers and politicians speak of a failed state, of a narco-state. How do you start working on a map of such criminal penetration?

-This is a very important issue, an axial point that has to be reversed. It is important to recover institutionality. If the former president of the executive was involved, you can see what kind of involvement there was. On the judicial side it is also devastating. The first sieve or strainer, the first filter was political change. There is a new generation of politicians that allows us to pursue other actors who have been in the institutions more effectively. Investigations follow this mix between politics and organized crime, and drug trafficking as a whole point of organized crime. It must be intervened with good scientific research, not from a theoretical or media point of view; it must be done with research that allows effective results to be obtained.

- Is it necessary to purge the security forces?

Yes, in the National Police it has to be permanent. I don't rule out that it should be done in the police. The army has its own mechanisms. But what are the police doing without a healthy political establishment? The previous government wanted to disappear it or put it on an administrative level. What happens in the judiciary. With the prosecution. Are they healthy? And the business system? It has to be a comprehensive national policy, implemented by Madam President, to purify institutions with criminal proceedings, in a pragmatic way. It's not just law enforcement. We are the first step, then comes the prosecution, then the judiciary. But if they come and overturn a law, they create impunity, they make it difficult for you to apply positive law, and also if they choke you with a budget in financing. But there are already indications that we are cutting this old policy in a healthy way; there is already a former president, a former director...

- The other leg of this table is the Public Prosecutor's Office, how is your relationship with the current attorney general?

-We hope it will improve in the future. At the beginning we had one or two conversations in which we dealt with some issues, but we did not have the desired follow-up. We are reconfiguring the criminal policy of the State in a more practical and visible way. There have not been enough meetings to address the treatment of the crime we all want.

(Oscar Chinchilla, the current attorney general of Honduras, is an official close to former President Juan Orlando Hernandez and the National Party. In the past he received allegations of favoring deputies of that party and not letting progress investigations affecting Hernández and his environment).

- Are there more extraditable than the former president?

-There are other people. I have seen on social networks that they mention so and sutano and make montages of photographs that do not correspond to those names. I understand the anxiety of the Honduran people to see justice done. Any new request for extradition that comes will be given the same treatment as has been given to those who are already in prison. We have left the message that we will proceed in accordance with the order issued by the competent body.

- How is the health of the former president now that he is already waiting for the last stage before his extradition?

-He is in an acceptable state of health. I say acceptable not because of the conditions, but because of its anatomy. His biological functions are very good. He is complying with his hours of sunshine with his exercises for some lumbago problems. You are covering your sleep periods in an acceptable way. It has an adequate diet. He has adequate medication because he takes some medications that need to be given to him; there are doctors in charge of any emergencies that may arise. He is receiving the visits that are allowed under internal regulations. He communicates with his lawyers, his wife, his visits in a coherent and very correct way.

- Did it have any personal significance to have been the one who captured former President Hernandez? We know that it was he who dismissed you and took away all your protections in 2014, so you had to go into exile from Honduras.

-In this case the person is detached from the official. In the existential sense, as a human being, he does not deprive any special emotions, emotions are suppressed. It deprives, as an official, compliance with the law and the orders emanating from the competent authorities. Symbolically, yes, because this was the end of an investigative process, under the law, in which we need to make sure that the highest judges do not engage in this type of action. In this case, the requesting country is the United States, but what I complied with was an order issued by the competent Honduran judge, which was based on the Constitution of the Republic. There was nothing personal, it's just a law enforcement official.

- About gangs: in Honduras there is mainly talk of drug trafficking, but we know that Barrio 18 and the MS have a very strong presence. What is the current situation?

-In this case, the National Police only plays a supporting role, because the investigation into the criminal activity of gangs is under the military administration in the National Anti-Maras Force; they are the ones who carry the crime of extortion. The crime of extortion is on the shoulders of the Armed Forces.

- Shouldn't it be a single head who investigates this?

-The Police have preventive control in the neighborhoods, control in the stadiums and we see how we can coordinate efforts in government institutions to deal with this phenomenon of gangs and drug use to intervene in this problem. But we don't have the other side, which is the criminal investigation of these gang-related crimes, the coup de law we call, and a public force that suffers from that legal tool is left with an amputated finger and what happens next is the victimization of the population that gang members charge extortion. That power should be vested in the National Police and there should be reforms in that regard.

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