Prison chief killed in ambush

In Honduras, a gang of gunmen on motorcycles killed Pedro Ildefonso Armas, the director of the nation’s maximum-security prison.

The prison was where a key witness against the president’s brother was killed in October. Armas was seen on a video two months ago talking to inmate Nery Lopez Sanabria before a masked man opened a door and allowed a gang of prisoners to shoot and stab Sanabria. Notebooks belonging to Sanabria were used in a US drug trafficking trial as evidence to convict former congressman Antonio Hernandez, the younger brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Armas, 52, and director of the prison, located in Santa Barbara, in the west of the country, was in a vehicle on the Pan-American Highway, in the south of the country, where strangers shot him dead. A car was placed next to the vehicle that Armas was driving who was shot several times.

Armas had requested political asylum in another country due to multiple death threats he received for his role as director of the prison. He was suspended from office after the Ministry of Security opened an investigation against him after witnessing how some inmates killed Magdaleno Meza on Oct. 26. Meza was a former associate of Tony Hernandez, who is the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez and was convicted of four drug trafficking crimes recently in the US. One piece of evidence presented against Hernandez in court was a notebook detailing drug trafficking operations that the police showed Meza when he was arrested for money laundering. There is video evidence of Armas talking with Meza before prison guards open the gate which allowed a dozen inmates to enter and shoot him at point blank range.