Will there be justice for the military killing of Isy Obed Murillo in Honduras?
That was aided and abetted by impunity and corruption of U.S. and Canada
By Grahame Russell, Rights Action, January 15, 2025
On July 5, 2009, I was on the streets of Tegucigalpa, amongst 100s of thousands of Hondurans protesting the U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup ouster, on June 28, 2009, of the government of President Mel Zelaya. It was on this day that Isy Obed Murillo was shot dead, hit in the head by military M-16 bullets.
On January 11, 2025, over 15 years later, a trial began in Honduras against three army generals for the killings of Isy Obed Murillo and Alex Zavala that day, in that protest.
On February 6, 2024, Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla (chief of police during the Narco-Regime) plead guilty in the U.S. to conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S..
On March 30, 2021, Tony Hernandez, former congressman and brother of Juan Orlando Hernandez, was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. for cocaine-importation, weapons, and false-statements offenses.
Maintaining mutually beneficial relations with 12 years and 7 months of military-backed ‘Narco’ governments was not limited to the governments of the U.S. and Canada.
Aura Minerals and Narcos
In July 2020, Rights Action reported that Aura Minerals – formerly both a Canadian and U.S. based company, now majority owned by Northwestern Enterprises Ltd – was carrying out its gold mining operation in Honduras in partnership with INCOBE, a Honduran heavy machinery company, that was accused of involvement with drug-trafficking organized crime.
Gildan Activewear and Narcos
In May 2023, Contra Corrientes published a major report - “The Narco’s Sacred Mountain”, by Celia Pousset – that details some of Canada’s Gildan Activewear Corp. business deals with Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, a major Honduran drug trafficker who had extensive ties to and protection from the recently ousted ‘Narco-Regime’ headed by President Juan Orlando Hernandez. In March 2020, the DEA arrested Geovanny Fuentes for cocaine importation and, in February 2022, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the U.S.
While I do not know or understand the full degree or nature of the business relations that Aura Minerals and Gildan Activewear had (or still have) with people and/or businesses controlled by Narco-trafficking interests, these reported relationships give a clearer idea of just who successive U.S. and Canadian governments and some of our companies will happily and profitably maintain political and economic relations with.
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It is impossible to overstate how much violence, destruction and harm the U.S. and Canadian-backed Narco-Regimes did to the Honduran people and society and all of its government and State institutions from 2009-2022.
Rights Action recommends listening to Episode 7, parts I and II, of the “Under the Shadow” podcast series, recapping the U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup in 2009, and then close to 13 years of unconditional U.S. and Canadian support for Narco-Regimes in power.
- Episode 7, Part I – 2009 Honduras: La Resistencia
- Episode 7, Part II – Honduras 2009: Legacy of a Coup
In Update 3 of the podcast, Karen Spring (former Rights Action colleague, long-time co-coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network) takes the listener inside the ‘Narco Trial of the Century’ that found Juan Orlando Hernández guilty of drug trafficking.
Karen provides a devastating summary of just how much violence and damage the Narco-Regime did to Honduras, its people, society, government and State institutions, all enabled by the U.S. and Canada.
One can only decry, again, the utter lack of political oversight or legal accountability in the U.S. and Canada when our governments (and often times businesses) support and enable repressive, corrupt regimes, and lie about it. It is the majority Honduran population that suffered the consequences of this U.S. and Canadian-enabled nightmare, as all aspects of their quality of life were flushed down the toilet.
