Civil Liberties Suspended in 2 Honduras Cities

The government of Honduras suspended civil liberties Friday in the country’s two largest cities in the wake of anti-American riots triggered by the expulsion to the United States of a suspected Honduran drug kingpin.

On Friday, mobs of mostly youthful rioters threw stones and set automobiles ablaze in downtown Tegucigalpa, just a few blocks from the pink rotunda of the presidential palace. Honduran riot police responded by sweeping through the narrow downtown streets, tossing tear-gas canisters at clusters of protesters and shooting rifles into the air.

Night of Unrest

The mobs, which reportedly included as many as 2,000 demonstrators, shouted anti-American slogans and threatened U.S. reporters covering the protest.

The riot followed a night of unrest in which part of the American Embassy complex here was burned, its windows smashed and archives destroyed. Both U.S. and Honduran officials said they were surprised by the violence of both riots, and American officials here described the protest Friday as “strong.”

There were no reports of injuries Friday’s unrest. Thursday’s riot left at least four persons dead, according to news reports, including a 14-year-old girl who witnesses said was fatally burned when rioters set fire to about two dozen cars at the U.S. Embassy.

Travel Advisory

In Washington late Friday, the State Department issued a travel advisory recommending that Americans not travel to any part of Honduras.

U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs protested the evidently tardy arrival of Honduran security police who came to defend the embassy Thursday. Witnesses and U.S. officials say the police arrived more than 90 minutes after the rioting began.

In Washington, the State Department indignantly demanded an explanation of the response time.

“We do not understand the slow response,” department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said. “We are highly concerned over the threat this posed to American and Honduran lives and the destruction of American property. We have taken this up with the government of Honduras on an urgent basis.” The Honduran government has issued no reply.

The capital of Tegucigalpa was converted overnight from a town where Americans had nearly full and free rein to carry on a wealth of activities to one in which they were being sought out for harassment, if not outright mob attack.

At the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Air Force Capt. Pat Engelhardt, the deputy public affairs officer for the embassy, said that 40 American citizens were being evacuated Friday from one of the capital city’s largest hotels, the Maya, on the initiative of the management.

“It’s not anything we requested,” Engelhardt said. “The hotel management apparently decided their U.S. guests would be safer outside the central city.” Some of the guests who were staying at the hotel said they were told protesters were marching on the high-rise structure with plans to harm Americans staying there.

Matta’s Removal

The storm of unrest resulted from the detention and removal from Honduras of Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a reputed major cocaine smuggler who is wanted in the United States on a variety of drug charges. He is also a suspect in the 1985 torture-murder of Enrique S. Camarena, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent stationed in Mexico.

U.S. drug enforcement officials consider Matta a key figure in cocaine trade from Colombia through Mexico and into the United States. At the time of Camarena’s death, the DEA agent was investigating that traffic.

On Tuesday, Honduran troops picked up Matta while he was jogging near his home in Comayaguela, a city located across a brackish river from Tegucigalpa. Matta was flown to the Dominican Republic, where he was arrested by U.S. marshals. He is now held at the maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Ill.

The arrest was arranged in negotiations between the U.S. and Honduran governments and took place despite the fact that Honduras has no extradition treaty with the United States and this country’s constitution forbids the extradition of its citizens.

‘Long Live Matta’

Local critics of the action called Matta’s removal a kidnaping. During both of this week’s riots, mobs yelled “Long live Matta, down with gringos!” and “Gringos, kill them!”

The government declared a 15-day state of emergency Friday afternoon for Tegucigalpa and the nation’s second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, 120 miles north of here. Under the measure, such rights as freedom of speech, assembly and press and that of habeas corpus and bail are suspended.

“Some constitutional guarantees are suspended because of the danger of a grave disturbance of the peace,” the Cabinet said.

Earlier, officials forced the country’s 140 radio stations to join a network controlled by the presidential press office. In a communique repeatedly read over the network, the government urged people to “repudiate violence” and “remain calm.”

A high Honduran government official said the country had never experienced street violence like that which took place Thursday and Friday. “There have always been demonstrations, but never such riots, and never against the U.S. Embassy,” the official said.

The Honduran government blames the violence on “groups financed by drug money.” Most of the protesters, at least on Friday, appeared to be high school and university students.

Ambassador Briggs met with Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyos early Friday to complain about deficiencies in the protection given the embassy by riot police.

According to embassy spokesman Michael O’Brien, U.S. officials called on the Hondurans for help at 7:37 p.m. Thursday, when demonstrators approached the embassy. The police did not arrive for another hour and a half, O’Brien said.

In the meantime, the mob had tossed Molotov cocktails at an annex building across the street from the main embassy, setting at least two floors on fire, charring outer walls and breaking scores of jalousie-glass windows.

Files Ransacked

The rioters broke through heavy iron grating that protected the front of the annex and set the lobby afire. They also broke windows and entered the ground-floor office of the U.S. Information Service, setting it ablaze and ransacking files.

Witnesses said that gasoline tanks exploded as the mob torched automobiles, while inside the building, copying machines and other technical equipment blew up, adding to the general din.

The rioters did not gain entrance to the main embassy building, O’Brien said, although they did crash through a fence protecting a parking lot and set fire to several large passenger vans used by U.S. officials.

O’Brien said that private security guards protecting the embassy were ordered not to shoot on the mob. Nor were the few U.S Marine guards stationed there ordered to defend the embassy.

He suggested that the reported deaths resulted from shooting among the rioters themselves, several of whom were seen firing pistols.

“In any country, embassies depend on the host country for their security,” O’Brien said.

‘Simply Not So’

In Santa Barbara, where President Reagan is spending an Easter holiday at his ranch, White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. denied that either Marine guards or Honduran police had fired into the crowd. “That is simply not so. That did not occur,” he said.

“Although there may have been injuries or deaths in the crowd, it was not as the result of U.S. soldiers or Marine guards, or Honduran police,” Baker said.

He said he knew few details of the incident, but added, “It’s a very serious situation. We’ve expressed our concern to the Honduran government about that.”

The U.S. Embassy employs 342 American citizens. Another 1,000 family members of U.S. personnel live in and around Tegucigalpa. In terms of numbers, the embassy is the America’s 11th largest in the world.

U.S. officials estimate that a total of 4,400 Americans live in Honduras. Some are employed indirectly by the United States through private relief and aid agencies.

American officials here and in Washington were embittered about Matta’s release from a Honduran jail about two years ago, when murder charges against him here were dropped. He had returned to Honduras after escaping from jail in Colombia. Press reports in Colombia said that he paid $1 million in bribes to facilitate his escape.

Charity Donations

Matta is something of a folk hero in Honduras, hailed by some as a modern “Robin Hood.” He reportedly spent large amounts of money on charity while free, and there were reports that he held parties attended by Honduran military officers. In recent months, reports from Washington have linked at least one high-ranking Honduran military officer with drug trafficking.

Matta is “probably the world’s most famous Honduran,” commented a Western diplomat.

A woman trying to get home through a haze of tear gas in downtown Tegucigalpa wept uncontrollably and blamed Matta’s removal from this country on the Honduran government. “They should not have done that to this man. Now our country is becoming another Nicaragua, another El Salvador,” she said.

Another bystander warned reporters not to approach downtown. “They want to lynch Americans,” he cautioned. As for Matta, he declared: “Matta may have been a criminal, but he was Honduran and loved his country.”

The U.S. Marshals Service and other American agencies have refused to discuss the negotiations that led to Matta’s arrest, other than to confirm that the United States instigated the sequence of events.

“It was our idea,” Stanley Morris, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, said at a news conference.

He said that the agency, in its efforts to apprehend drug smugglers and fugitives around the world, will not “kidnap anybody.” But he added, “We’re going to creatively arrest a lot of people, and we’re going to put them in jail for a long time.”

Times staff writers Don Shannon in Washington and James Gerstenzang in Santa Barbara contributed to this story.