A newly public surveillance video seems to show that the agency’s account of a raid in Honduras — where four civilians died — was not accurate.
by Mattathias Schwartz
This story was co-published with The New York Times. Leer en español.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has for five years
steadfastly defended the behavior of its agents in a late-night drug
seizure carried out with Honduran forces on the remote Mosquito Coast, a
mission that resulted in the deaths of four Honduran civilians.
In the DEA’s view, the dead — one man, two women and a 14-year-old
boy — were among those on a boat that shot at a canoe carrying a joint
DEA-Honduran anti-drug team. The DEA said it had evidence in the form of
night-vision video taken from a surveillance plane showing an “exchange
of gunfire” between the two vessels after the larger boat collided with
the canoe carrying the agents.
Now, for the first time, the three-hour video has been released to
the public. It strongly suggests that the DEA’s account of crossfire in
the May 2012 mission was not accurate. The release of the video, under a
Freedom of Information Act request, follows a scathing report published by the inspectors general of the Departments of Justice and State earlier this year that challenged the DEA’s version of events.
The video shows numerous flashes of light consistent with gunshots
originating from the anti-drug unit, according to Bruce Koenig, a
forensic expert hired by ProPublica and The New York Times to analyze
the images.
Mr. Koenig, who formerly was supervisor of the F.B.I.’s forensic
audio/video group, examined the video frame by frame and concluded that
only one flash originates from the passenger boat. In Mr. Koenig’s view,
that flash could have been caused by a bullet striking the engine,
which was later found to have a bullet hole. Infrared cameras detect
heat and turn it into bright spots on video, so a muzzle flash from a
gunshot and a spark from a bullet ricocheting off a metal surface can
create similar flares.
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Source: ProPublica
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