Friday, 26 July 2013 00:00 By Sandra Cuffe and Karen Spring, Truthout | Report
More than a year has passed since a DEA-assisted drug war operation in the Honduran Moskitia killed four indigenous Miskitu civilians, and relatives of the victims are still looking for answers.
Responses have been few and far between. Honduran judicial authorities highlight a lack of cooperation from the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, impeding their investigation. A leaked State Department memo suggests high-level interference in the United States’ own investigation. And a local police official in the remote Moskitia region in northeastern Honduras told Truthout that destruction of evidence by the DEA is a regular occurrence in the area.
In the early morning of May 11, 2012, a boat carrying 16 passengers was approaching the public docking site on the Patuca River in the town of Ahuas. The passenger boat was hit by rounds of automatic gunfire fired from US State Department-owned helicopters flown by private contractors carrying DEA Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team (FAST) agents and vetted Honduran Tactical Response Team agents. Four boat passengers were killed: two women, a 14-year-old boy and a young man. Three other individuals were badly injured.