TEGUCIGALPA – A businessman whose son is deputy defense minister in the Micheletti cabinet that has governed Honduras since the June 28 deposement of former President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped Tuesday in Tegucigalpa, a crime his wife attributed to the country’s political conflict.

Alfredo Jalil, father of Gabo Jalil, was grabbed after leaving his home in an affluent neighborhood near the presidential palace, Gloria Mejia de Jalil told the media.

She said that around 8:45 a.m., one car got in front of Jalil’s vehicle and another stopped behind to prevent it from moving before making the businessman get out.

The kidnappers fired at least one bullet at the left-side door of the victim’s car, Mejia de Jalia said, describing her husband as a man of nearly 81 years who suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes.

She said her husband was alone in the car and needs medicines on a daily basis.

Mejia de Jalil attributed the kidnapping to the conflict the country is going through after the ouster of Zelaya.

“All I ask them (the coup opponents) is that they have pity on elderly people. We’re not to blame for what is happening,” she said.

Members of the Jalil family have long been militants in the ruling Liberal Party, and both Alfredo Jalil and his wife were members of congress, while she was also a hopeful for the post of Tegucigalpa’s mayor.

Gabo Jalil is a lawmaker who took a leave of absence to work in the government led by Roberto Micheletti, whom a plurality of congress designated as president after Zelaya’s ouster.

The abduction of Alfredo Jalil came after a weekend when one of Micheletti’s nephews was found slain and several unknown persons killed army Col. Concepcion Jimenez.

Talks between representatives of Zelaya and the coup regime broke down over the weekend, thanks largely to Zelaya's insistence on reinstatement and the government’s unwillingness to accept his return as head of state.

In the eyes of Constituional scholars and most Hondurans, Zelaya’s ouster was not a coup. The soldiers who escorted Zelaya from the presidential palace were enforcing a Supreme Court order after Zelaya refused to comply with their earlier order banning his planned referendum on revising the constitution to allow for unlimited presidential terms. The Constitution calls for immediate disempowerment of any official who does so.


Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution says “Any citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch cannot be President or Vice-President again. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those who support such violation directly or indirectly, must immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.”

In August, the U.S. Congress Law Library issued a report that calls the disempowerment of Zelaya, with the exception of the removal of Zelaya from the country, constitutional under Honduran law.

According to report author Norma Gutiérrez, the Honduran Congress has the power to "disapprove of the conduct of the president".

The Congress "implicitly exercised its power of constitutional interpretation in the case of Zelaya when it decided that its power to 'disapprove' the president's actions encompassed the power to remove him", the report says.

Even Zelaya's own political party voted to remove him.

In the meantime, the Organization of American States, the United States and the European Union have been pressing Micheletti to accept the San Jose Accord, a proposal put forward by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

The plan calls for Zelaya to return and lead a national unity government for the few months left in his term, and for a political amnesty that would protect both sides in the dispute.

Time is running out before presidential elections scheduled for Nov. 29, as both the European Union and Washington have said they will not recognize the winner of that balloting unless Zelaya is restored to office beforehand. Elections have traditionally been the only way that coups and changes of government have been peacefully resolved in Latin American history.

According to US Congressman Eliot Engel, Chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, “The presidential candidates in Honduras have asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to provide international observers for the country’s November 29th election. I urge OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza to grant this request, so that an effective election monitoring effort can be put into place.”