Pnma: Honduran death squads making a comeback?

TEGUCIGALPA --- The bullet-ridden bodies of three men, the youngest 17, were discovered late in the night of March 21 on the road to Olancho. All had been shot multiple times in what appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. A witness who refused to be identified called the carnage "a well-planned execution."

In February, a 19-year-old man was shot dead as he walked home from a party. Driving a van with tinted windows, his assailants disappeared into the night. The dead youth is the twentieth victim (that month) of what is increasingly being characterized as "extrajudicial executions" carried out by elusive but well organized groups of hired killers.

According to Casa Alianza, an advocate of children's rights in Central America and Mexico, 65 youths were murdered in Honduras in the first two months of 2004. Casa Alianza, which has routinely accused Honduran security forces and the business sector of collusion, claims that 2,200 children and juveniles under the age of 23 were murdered between January 1998 and February 2004.

And as a wave of bloodletting continued to sully the reputation of Honduras, fresh accusations surfaced that remnants of the sinister Battalion 3-16 death squad were now engaged in new forms of vigilantism --- not against left-leaning teachers, unruly campesinos or activist priests but against "undesirables," among them homeless minors and youth suspected of gang membership.

Bermuda and Bahamas, take note.