Detained Hondurans

Editor’s note: Results show that presidential candidate Porfirio Lobo has won the Honduran elections. In June, President Jose Manuel Zelaya was forced out of office after a military coup.

Amnesty International urged the Honduran authorities to reveal the identities, whereabouts and charges against all people detained on the eve and day of the presidential elections. In one of the most worrying cases, the whereabouts of Jensys Mario Umanzor Gutierrez remains unknown. He was last seen at 2:30 a.m. this morning in the custody of a Police Patrol whose identification number was recorded by witnesses.

After finding about the case, the Amnesty International delegation in Honduras assisted in the filing of a habeas corpus -- a legal procedure to find the whereabouts and well being of someone detained by police -- at the Juzgado Penal Francisco Morazan.

The Supreme Court, amongst several other courts, was closed and no one was available by phone either to receive the petition. The court should have a judge or other court appointed official always available to deal with such urgent matters.

“Filling a petition to find where a detainee has been taken is an almost impossible task in Honduras,” said Javier Zuñiga, head of the Amnesty International delegation in Honduras. “The delays and barriers imposed by the authorities to find even basic information goes to show the extent of violations taken place in Honduras today, and how vulnerable Honduran citizens are to abuses by the police and security forces,” said Zuñiga.

Habeas Corpus is a legal procedure by which a judge is required to demand the police reveal the whereabouts of a person who is believed to have been detained and allow the judge to see the detainee. This is a basic guarantee needed to protect people from torture, ill-treatment and ...