US agent told Honduras gunner to fire on civilian boat — Report

WASHINGTON: A US agent ordered a Honduran machinegunner to fire from a helicopter during an operation in which four people including two pregnant women were killed, according to a damning report.

The Office of the Inspectors General at the US State and Justice departments sharply criticized the Drug Enforcement Agency agents’ role in the May 11, 2012 shooting in Ahuas, Honduras and the followup investigation.

Just after 2.00am in the dead of night, a joint team of DEA agents and Honduras police were escorting a canoe laden with cocaine they had seized from smugglers on the Patuca river in a remote area of the Central American country.

The drug boat lost power and bumped into a water taxi with 16 people on board, whereupon law enforcement officers on the canoe and a door gunner in a US State Department helicopter that was escorting it opened fire.

As the passengers jumped into the water four of them — a 14-yearold boy identified in the report as ‘ H. B.W.’; Emerson Martinez Henriquez, 21; Juana Jackson, 28; and Candelaria Pratt Nelson, 48 — were shot dead.

Local reports after the shooting identified ‘ H. B.W.’ as Brook Wodd, and family members said both female victims were pregnant.

Authorities initially said police had come under fire from the boat and responded in self defence — and that only the Honduran officers had used their weapons, while the DEA agents were there only in an advisory role.

But the OIG report found that video footage of the incident shot from a US Customs and Border Patrol spotter plane showed no evidence that anyone on the water taxi had fired or was even armed. — AFP