Honduras Denies That Syrian Detainees Have Links with Extremists

TEGUCIGALPA – The Honduran government said on Thursday that the five Syrians arrested two days ago at Tegucigalpa’s Toncontin airport as they were trying to travel to the United States using stolen Greek passports have no links with terrorist groups.

“It’s been completely ruled out that (the arrested Syrian men) belong to a violent group,” the director of the National Immigration Institute, Carolina Menjivar, told reporters.

The detainees, who have not been publicly identified, arrived on Tuesday night at Toncontin airport on a flight from Costa Rica and their ultimate destination evidently was to be the United States.

The men have been held since Wednesday at a police station in the Honduran capital and will be placed at the disposal of the Attorney General’s Office on charges of falsification of documents.

The arrested men left Greece and traveled through “Peru (and) Costa Rica, until they arrived in Honduras,” Menjivar said.

Four of the men “are university students and the other holds a university degree,” said the official, who insisted that the Syrians “do not belong to any body or entity that engages in violence, nor do they have criminal records in their (homeland).”

She said, in addition, that the arrested men “cannot request asylum” in Honduras because they tried to enter the Central American country on stolen passports.

The Honduran government reported on Wednesday in an official communique that it had turned the case of the five Syrians over to Interpol.

Last Friday, Honduran authorities arrested another Syrian citizen at the Toncontin airport.

The man was detained for investigation and after determining that he was carrying a false passport he was refused entry by Honduran authorities and the following day he traveled to Paraguay, but later he was arrested in Argentina with a stolen passport, the Honduran government said.

The National Immigration Institute emphasized that it has a biometric security system in place that enabled authorities to arrest the six Syrians when they tried to enter the country with false documentation.