Terrorist Blasts in Honduras Cut Across Political Boundaries

Union leader Leonor Meza was barely awake in her suburban Miraflores neighborhood the morning a high-powered bomb exploded in the back of her red pickup truck.

The Jan. 14 explosion, which tore the truck to bits and damaged a neighbor’s house, was the most recent incident in a wave of bombings and bomb scares that began last August when radio commentator Rodrigo Wong Arevalo’s car and part of his house were destroyed with plastic explosive.

Other targets in the last six months include the conservative newspaper La Prensa, the Mexican Embassy and the offices of the Honduran Human Rights Commission. Employees of the Israeli Embassy found a box in their offices that they feared was a bomb but which turned out to contain a harmless black powder.

No one has been killed or even seriously injured in the bombings, but police attribute that to luck. The early morning bomb set in Wong’s car, for example, went off shortly before he normally leaves for work.

‘A New Development’

Nor has anyone claimed responsibility for the series of attacks, which police spokesman Capt. Jose Anahel Perez called new to Honduras.

Meza, a leader of the left-leaning United Federation of Honduran Workers and an opponent of the anti-Sandinista contras based in Honduras, believes she was targeted for her views.

“It was the contras, or if it was not them, it was people tied to them, people opposed to an independent position,” Meza said.

The 36-year-old mother of two said she fears for her life. Before the January explosion, she said, a fire bomb had been set Oct. 29 near her truck, parked in a neighbor’s driveway, but the fire was extinguished before any damage was done.

Rebels Deny Role

Rebel spokesmen deny responsibility for any of the attacks or any connection with the bombers. Some political observers say they believe the rebels are too busy with their war in Nicaragua to worry about opponents in Honduras, where the government and military have largely cooperated with their efforts.

Radio America commentator Wong and Ramon Custodio, director of the Human Rights Commission, also are outspoken critics of the contra presence in Honduras and of U.S. policy in Central America. The Mexican government has been a prime mover of the Contadora peace initiative, which the contras and conservatives distrust.

But La Prensa is a conservative newspaper, strongly anti-Sandinista and opposed to the Contadora initiative, in which Mexico and other Latin nations are seeking settlement of Central American conflicts through a regional peace treaty.

“There is sort of a contradiction in the bombing here,” said an editor at La Prensa who asked not to be identified. The editor said he had no idea who planted the bomb in a restroom at the newspaper, destroying it and several office windows, and slightly injuring a director of advertising.

‘I Don’t Have Proof’

Wong said he also does not know who set the bomb in his car last August. He said he has received anonymous telephone calls from people telling him that it was set by the Honduran military, but added: “I cannot accuse them. I don’t have any proof.”

Wong complained, however, that the police have not adequately investigated his case. He said he has placed 15 calls to the head of the National Directorate for Investigations, Col. Guillermo Pinel Calix, who is in charge of the case, but has never been able to talk to him.

“We have not seen any concern on the part of the government. . . . Nothing, nothing,” Wong said.

Perez, the police spokesman, insisted that an investigation continues. He had no comment on any possible suspects.

“This is a new development in our country. We think it is the result of a clandestine plan to create uncertainty, confusion and problems for the government,” Perez said. He said the culprits are “enemies of the democratic system” but declined to say whether they might be from the left or the right. He said he doubted it was the contras.

Bombings May Be Linked

Perez said police assume the bombings are related, committed by either one or two groups.

A Mexican Embassy source also complained that the Honduran officials appeared uninterested in investigating the embassy incident. At mid-day Jan. 10, a crude homemade bomb was tossed into the courtyard of the Mexican Embassy. A guard noticed it and put it out with a garden hose, the source said.

“I believe the bomb was meant to cause concern within the embassy because of the visit of the Contadora foreign ministers,” the source said.

Eight Latin American foreign ministers visited Honduras along with Latin leaders of the Organization of American States and the United Nations during a tour of Central America last month.

Exiles Seek Asylum

The embassy source said that when six Nicaraguan exiles sought asylum in the Mexican Embassy during October and November, the embassy received frequent anonymous telephone threats in the night. He said that the Nicaraguans had left their country under the Sandinistas but were fleeing contra recruiters who the source said had beaten them in refugee camps.

The Human Rights Commission offices were fire-bombed twice last September, and a house next door was hit with a fire bomb in October, according to commission director Custodio. Custodio said that in December he also received a bomb wrapped as a gift while he was in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. The bomb did not explode.

In his case, Custodio blames a military intelligence unit for the fire bombs. Custodio said he received anonymous telephone death threats “accusing me of being a Communist” around the time of the bombings.

Concerns About Safety

American friends of Custodio’s wrote to the U.S. Embassy recently to express their concern for his safety. In response, human rights officer Eric S. Rubin wrote that Hondurans “have complete freedom to speak their minds, to read what they wish, to demonstrate against their government, and to organize in their workplaces” and that he did not believe Custodio was in danger.

“This embassy is aware of no instance in which persons taking advantage of those rights were intimidated or threatened,” Rubin wrote.

An alleged death list circulated for the first time in years last August with 17 names, including the head of the Honduran Legislature, but no one on the list apparently has been the target of violence since it appeared. The source of the list was never known.

Rubin said in the letter that “I can categorically state that there are no ‘death squads’ of any kind operating in Honduras.”

There were a number of political killings and disappearances in Honduras in the early 1980s. They were blamed on the military while Gen. Gustavo Alvarez was head of the armed forces. Alvarez has since retired and moved to Miami.