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From target to enforcer: Honduras minister vows ‘surgical’ cartel fight

AFP

Forced into hiding after targeting a drug cartel with alleged ties to the then-government, Honduras’s hounded police chief-turned interior minister has vowed to extract criminal tentacles in the State with “surgical” precision.

Ramon Sabillon, minister in the new cabinet of leftist Xiomara Castro, told AFP he was fired from his former job as police chief after dismantling a drug cartel in 2014 without informing then-president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Hernandez is today awaiting extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges.

The cartel he had hit, named Valle Valle, “had penetrated the structures of State” under Hernandez, Sabillon told AFP in an interview.

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Hernandez had him fired, he said, and “threatened with death, I had to leave the country… I had to either save my life or continue in the police… I preferred life.”

Now Sabillon is back as Castro’s interior minister, and in a twist of irony one of his first tasks was to execute an arrest warrant for Hernandez.

Hernandez, who held office from 2014 to early this year, is accused of having facilitated the smuggling of some 500 tons of drugs — mainly from Colombia and Venezuela — to the United States via Honduras since 2004.

In return, he allegedly received millions of dollars in bribes as well as protection money from drug kingpins such as Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Hernandez’s brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.

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– ‘A mafia’ –

“When organized crime gets embedded in the State, it becomes a mafia because it holds the power of the State. So it is a surgical job that we have to do, democratically, by enforcing the law,” Sabillon told AFP.

Extraditing a former president, he added, “sends a strong message to the entire population, to those seeking public office, that the State will not tolerate” such actions.

At least 40 Hondurans are sought by the United States on drug allegations.

The minister said a number of coca plantations and laboratories have been dismantled since the beginning of the year.

Cartels are seeking to become more autonomous, he explained, with production in Honduras itself, “so they need not depend on the point of origin” in South American countries such as Colombia and Peru.

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Hernandez, a right-wing lawyer, left office on January 27 when leftist Castro became president of the country with a poverty rate of at least 60 percent among its 10 million inhabitants.

The country’s first woman president faces an uphill struggle to reform a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. 

Tens of thousands of its citizens have tried to flee to the United States.

She has vowed to tackle deep-seated government corruption.

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Central America

Guatemala Court Voids List of Candidates for Top Prosecutor Position

President of Guatemala cannot remove attorney general from office

Constitutional Court of Guatemala on Thursday annulled the shortlist of six candidates for attorney general and head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, ordering authorities to repeat the evaluation phase of the selection process.

The ruling came in response to a legal appeal filed by Raúl Amílcar Falla Ovalle, who challenged the way professional experience had been assessed for some applicants, particularly those with careers in the judiciary.

As a result of the decision, the selection process has been suspended, and the Postulation Commission must return to the stage in which the original 48 applicants were evaluated.

According to the ruling, the commission must reapply the grading criteria without automatically counting years served as judges as equivalent to the professional experience required for the position.

“The Postulation Commission for the election of the Attorney General and Head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is ordered to reassess the applicants by strictly applying the approved grading table,” the resolution states.

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The Constitutional Court also stressed that the process must guarantee merit, competence, and suitability, while ensuring greater transparency in the assignment of scores.

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Central America

U.S. extradites Iranian man over alleged sanctions evasion scheme

The United States has extradited from Panama an Iranian national accused of evading economic sanctions against Iran by illegally exporting U.S. technology. He is scheduled to appear this Monday before a court in Seattle.

Reza Dindar, 44, was extradited on April 17 after being detained in Panama since July 2025 on charges related to export control violations between 2011 and 2012, allegedly carried out through companies based in China.

The defendant appeared before a U.S. district court in Seattle, where he faces charges of violating sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran in 1995 during the administration of Bill Clinton. These sanctions prohibit the unauthorized export, re-export, or supply—directly or indirectly—of U.S. goods, technology, or services to Iran or its government.

According to the indictment, between 2010 and 2014, Dindar led the company New Port Sourcing Solutions in Xi’an, China, which allegedly concealed the procurement of U.S. products for shipment to clients in Iran.

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Central America

Bukele administration surpasses 1,100 homicide-free days amid ongoing crackdown

El Salvador's PNC adds 85 days without murders and April is on track to be the safest in Salvadoran history

On Saturday, April 18, the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) reported that no homicides were recorded in El Salvador, bringing the total to 17 days without murders.

With this update, the country has accumulated 91 homicide-free days so far in 2026. January closed with 27 such days, followed by 24 in February and 23 in March, according to police data.

During the administration of President Nayib Bukele, a total of 1,193 days without homicides have been registered. Of those, 1,079 have occurred since the implementation of the state of exception.

This extraordinary security measure has been extended 49 times by the Asamblea Legislativa de El Salvador, with the latest extension in effect from April 1 to April 30, 2026. Under the measure, more than 91,700 gang members and collaborators have been detained and prosecuted for illicit association.

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