The President of Honduras Is Deploying U.S.-Trained Forces Against Election Protesters

http://theintercept.com/2017/12/03/the-president-of-honduras-is-deploying-u-s-trained-forces-against-election-protesters/
Date Written:  2017-12-03
Publisher:  The Intercept
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21789

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, using the specter of rampant crime and the drug trade, won extensive support from the American government to build up highly trained state security forces. Now, those same forces are repressing democracy.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

Since the elections, the Honduran government has made no effort to conceal the role of the two elite military police units. In the run-up to the election, Secretary of Security Julián Pacheco Tinoco announced that TIGRES and Cobra forces would be among the 16,000 police officers deployed to monitor the election.

The Comando de Operaciones Especiales, or Cobras, are riot police trained by U.S. SWAT teams. The Tropa de Inteligencia de Respuesta Especial de Seguridad, or TIGRES, were formed to fight urban violence and organized crime in 2014 by Hernández as he took office promising to bring down the world's highest peacetime murder rate.