Honduras: Iraq mercenaries recruited

On Sept. 19 Honduran defense minister Federico Breve ordered an investigation into a camp the Chicago-based firm Your Solutions was running in the community of Lepaterique to train security personnel for work in US-occupied Iraq. The Honduran daily La Tribuna revealed the training camp’s existence, apparently based on evidence from a disgruntled sergeant identified as Wilmer Ruiz.

The company reportedly contracted to send 600 men to Iraq in or before October; it had already sent 36 Hondurans and was planning to send another 353 Hondurans, along with 211 Chileans. Benjamin Canales, Your Solutions director in Honduras, told the recruits they would be paid $900 to $1,500 a month during their six-month tours in Iraq. They were reportedly being trained by US and Chilean teachers in facilities of the state-owned Honduran Forest Development Corporation in a mountainous region 30 km northwest of Tegucigalpa. The instructors “explained to us that where we were going everyone would be our enemy, and we’d have to look at them that way, because they would want to kill us, and the gringos too,” an unidentified trainee told the AFP wire service. “So we’d have to be heartless when it was up to us to kill someone, even it was a child.”

On Sept. 20 the Honduran government ordered the expulsion of 105 Chilean trainees within 72 hours on the grounds that they lied about their purpose when entering the country on Sept. 8 on 30-day tourist visas. They were bused to the Nicaraguan border at Las Manos on Sept. 23, but Nicaraguan authorities refused to accept them. Governance and Justice Minister Roberto Pacheco extended the time for the Chileans to leave another 72 hours “for humanitarian reasons,” he said on Sept. 24. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, Sept. 22; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Sept. 24, Terra Honduras, Sept. 25)

Your Solutions has also been recruiting in Nicaragua, according to a report in the Nicaraguan daily Nuevo Diario. The company is represented by a man named David Godoy, who told the paper that he had talked to about 100 potential recruits. Similar recruitment is going on in Peru, according to the Peruvian daily La Republica. The Peruvian company Gesegur SAC ran ads for retired commissioned and non-commissioned military officers from Aug. 21 to Sept. 18; it evaluated applications and then sent them on to 3D Global Solutions in Indiana. (ED-LP, Sept. 23, 25) (The text of an Aug. 15 press release entitled “3D Global Solutions Expands Operations into Latin America and Opens Offices in Lima, Peru” has apparently been removed from the company’s website.)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Sept. 25

See our last post on recuitment of Iraq mercenaries in Latin America, and political struggle in Central America.

  1. This is yet another sad examp
    This is yet another sad example of the privitization of the millitary. For years this process has been happening under the radar and out of the public eye. Yet, since the begining of the Iraq war it has become increasing evident that organizations such as Blackwater inc. and Global Solutions have been profiting on what is perhaps the second oldest profession. These “new” mercinaries are just as dangerous as the “old” mercinaries in that they do not have to abid by the will of the people or their governments but by the will their corporate sponsors.

    1. Well if America wouldn’t
      Well if America wouldn’t piss and moan about about this war, regardless if it is about oil, there would be no need to privatize the military. All the mommys are complaining about their sons dying for a needless cause. Needless, sure I guess Kurds getting gassed was ok. Oh, but EVERYBODY forgets about the genocide in Iraq. War for oil will continue until it is gone. Mark my words, when oil costs 150 a barrel, You will see how big China really is. If China is pushing around the Tibetans that want freedom, then what the fuck do you think is going to happen when THEY need oil? WW4!!! As far as I am concerned this is a tune-up. And don’t give me shit like I don’t care. I served in the Marines from 1998-2002. During 9/11 and Afghanistan, I have brothers in Iraq that ARE dying. The difference is that I know the reality of the World. Stop driving your damn cars if you are so pissed at this war. Because the damn sand-niggers are causing us to go broke with their oil. Stop driving or drop bombs!!!!

  2. New Contract.
    The effort American of tax payers in Irak are starting to benefit Anglo American oil companies. TheIraqui pupet Goverment has granded oil concession to 3 American oil companies to oxplore for oil in in the kurdish region withiout any international call for bidings.

    Why Sirian trops has to be out of Libanon so the country has a free election and Iraq and Agfanistan have to have US armed forces in the ground to have a free and fair election.

    Bush legal system is based on: “because I am the strongest I am always right”.