7 News Belize

Report: Belizean Fugitives Were Executed By Honduran Cops
posted (October 1, 2010)
All this week we've been reporting on Benjamin Peters and Alexander Edwards who were shot to death in Honduras…and the reported injury to Gabriel Salazar. All 3 were fugitives wanted for a number of charges including murder, in the Scotiabank Spanish Lookout Robbery.

The story that has been going around is that the pair was killed trying to rob a bus while Salazar was injured. Well it's not so, and not even nearly so.

According to La Prensa, a Honduran newspaper Edwards and Peters were executed by Police officer in a village called El Sitio De La Union in Copan Honduras. The police actually set out to execute all three but a man who has not been identified, survived. Belize police are "99% sure" he is Gabriel Salazar - while the press report from Honduras would only say that, quote: The men were identified as Benjamín Peters, 25, and Alessandro Edward, 30, and a third whose name is omitted for reasons of security.

That reason of security is that he is now a witness to an execution pulled off by Honduran police.

This third man somehow survived and with the help of the villagers he was taken to a local hospital where he told authorities how his friends had been executed.

He is now in protective custody and four police officers who allegedly pulled off the execution are detained. It is a very strange and remarkable ordeal and the article states that it began on Sunday night when the trio entered Honduras through the Agua Caliente border station at the Guatemala, Honduras border. Honduran Customs police searched them and found guns in their bags. They were taken to the police station and at about 3:00 am they were told they would be transferred into the custody of the office of the public ministry.

But instead of that, they were taken in two private vehicles out to the International Highway near the village of El Sitio where they were ordered out of the vehicles, all three were shot and left to die. A man who is believed to be Salazar somehow survived and he provided the account of the execution.

And while Salazar is wanted for multiple offences in Belize including the bank heist and as a person of interest in the murder of a Big Falls shopkeeper, Belize Police - we are told - will have to wait until the Honduran have finished what has become a very high profile investigation in that country.

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