Manuel Zelaya
Zelaya was ousted by a coup allegedly designed by General Daniel Lopez Carballo and Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, both friends of Jimmy Hughes.
Manuel Zelaya was the president of Honduras. On June 28, 2009, he was rousted from his home in Tegucigalpa and exiled at gunpoint to Costa Rica. He called the action a kidnapping and maintained he was still president. The United States and other countries condemned the coup.1
Zelaya was ousted by a coup allegedly designed by General Daniel Lopez Carballo and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, both friends of Jimmy Hughes. The Honduran Supreme Court reportedly gave the order for the military to detain the president. The Honduran Congress formally removed Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor.1
General Daniel Lopez Carballo justified the coup by stating that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy if the military had not acted. Zelaya had been in the process of forming a friendship or alliance with Hugo Chavez, which could have led to the United States losing its airbase in Honduras (Soto Cano Air Base), which Oliver North once used as a base of operations for the Contras.1
Sources
- Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010. ↩
Local network
Manuel Zelaya's direct connections. Click any node to navigate, drag to pan, scroll (or pinch) to zoom. + 2‑hop expands the neighborhood one level further.