Supreme Court cleared Coup General's Romeo Vásquez Velázquez crimes involving auto theft

Romeo  Cleared

The Supreme Court has just cleared Romeo Vásquez Velásquez of charges that he was trafficking in stolen cars, a case when had remained frozen since 1993. Romeo was cleared, along with the 12 other defendants who had been charged in the case. The Supreme Court unfroze the case and dismissed it for "lack of evidence".

Honduras Coup General Was Charged in 1993 Auto Theft Ring

Posted by Al Giordano - July 4, 2009 at 4:15 pm

By Al Giordano

General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who appeared on stage this week with Honduran coup “president” Roberto Michiletti, and who ordered the kidnapping and forced deportation of P resident Manuel Zelaya last Sunday, was charged with grand auto theft in 1993, Narco News has learned.

On February 2, 1993, the front page of the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo included this headline: “Eleven Members of the Gang of 13 Go to Prison”:

“Eleven individuals arrested for their alleged participation in the theft of 200 luxury automobiles… were sent to prison yesterday… (including) Colonel Wilfredo Leva Caborrea and Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, accused as alleged participants…”

(Narco News makes the document available for download by press and public here, including two interior pages of the newspaper that report on the case, each mentioning the then-major, now commander of the military coup in Honduras.)

The newspaper report further stated:

“…Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, connected to the theft of luxury cars in the ‘Gang of 13,’ will be imprisoned in the Central Penitentiary (PC, in its Spanish initials).”

Prior to his criminal acts, Vásquez attended the US School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, when the school was located in Panama, but he did not graduate.

It was the same Honduran Congress that endorsed, after the fact, last Sunday’s military coup, and named Roberto Micheletti as the country's "president," that promoted this common car thief as head of the Armed Forces.

Memo to the General: Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear..