Victims caught in Honduras drugs crossfire

Stephen Sackur joins a navy patrol crew in Honduras trying to stop the smuggling of cocaine to the United States. Honduras is in the grip of a drugs war with US drug enforcement agents helping local forces fight organised gangs, who traffic tons of cocaine destined for the United States, as HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur reports. The deep bullet wound in Hilda Lezama's thigh is a livid pointer to Honduras's unwanted status as a new frontline in America's war on drugs.  My son-in-law was killed, two of my neighbours were killed, and I was wounded, so where are the Americans? Don't you think they should talk to me?  Hilda Lezama For all of her 53 years, Hilda Lezama has lived in Ahuas, a settlement of wooden homes built on stilts, close to the fast-flowing Patuca river in the remote Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras. She was shot in a joint Honduran-US counter-narcotics raid on a riverboat two months ago. Four other local people, including two local women, were killed in the airborne attack which involved US drug enforcement agents and Honduran police. "We were returning from a trip down-river with the fishermen," Hilda recalled. "We travelled at night to avoid the heat. We heard the helicopters above us, but we couldn't see them. "They could have let us dock and then searched the boat, but instead they shot us. Maybe they were thinking we were someone else." US officials said Hilda's boat was part of a drug-smuggling operation that involved a stash of drugs flown into an airstrip close to the Patuca river, a charge she categorically denies. "If we were criminals we could not complain, but we are innocent working people," she insisted. Lethal force The Americans said none of their agents opened fire. According to the US Ambassador in Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, a preliminary investigation by the Honduran authorities suggested "no wrong doing". The only way out of Ahuas is by boat on the Patuca river That proposition may be tested in the Honduran courts. A human rights group, the Committee of the Relatives of the Disappeared has filed a legal complaint against the Honduran and US governments citing violations of human rights. The Ahuas raid was no isolated incident. Within the last month, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents have shot dead two suspected traffickers in separate raids in eastern Honduras - the first use of lethal force by US DEA agents in Central America. The increasingly aggressive anti-trafficking strategy - codenamed Operation Anvil - is aimed at intercepting illegal drugs flown in to the sparsely populated Mosquitia region from South America. More than 80% of the cocaine entering the United States is now thought to be trans-shipped through Honduras. The US has long had a military presence at the Palmerola base in central Honduras. What was once a key asset in the war against the Sandinistas in neighbouring Nicaragua is now focused on the war on drugs.

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