TEGUCIGALPA – Dagoberto Rodríguez, director of Radio Cadena Voces and an editor for the Proceso Digital newspaper, has returned to Honduras after spending more than two months in the United States to escape an alleged plan to kill him.
Rodríguez said that he returned to Tegucigalpa last week and was already back at work.
The journalist said he could not remain abroad for an extended period of time due to financial and family reasons, adding that he expected that the death threats police warned him about last October would not continue.
Rodríguez left this Central American nation Nov. 1, two weeks after journalist and radio comedian Carlos Salgado was gunned down after leaving the RCV studios in Tegucigalpa. Radio Cadena Voces said at the time that Rodríguez was “forced” to leave after the “warnings made by police that a group of hired gunmen planned to kill him in the next 72 hours.”
“This warning, coming from the authorities in charge of providing protection for the lives of all the citizens of Honduras just makes clear the general level of insecurity of the people, and journalists in particular,” RCV said in November.
Carlos Salgado, the creator and star of a popular radio comedy show that often lampooned politicians, was gunned down last Oct. 18 as he was leaving the RCV studios after taping his program.
Witnesses said two men fired handguns at Salgado and then sped off in a car. The comedian died within minutes of arriving at the hospital. Salgado was the producer and protagonist of “Las historietas de Frijol El Terrible” (The Cartoons of Bean the Terrible), which aired daily on RCV.
Police arrested a man in connection with the slaying of Salgado, which followed a Sept. 7 incident that saw television newscaster Geovanny Garcia wounded when shots were fired at his car on a Tegucigalpa street.
García left Honduras at the end of last year, according to unofficial reports, and the government named him to a consular post in Canada.
