Honduras: The Supreme Court's case Part 2

Commenters alerted me to the fact that the Honduran Supreme Court documents related to Zelaya's overthrow are now online at the Court's website as PDFs. Three main points jump out immediately.

First, opposition leaders have been saying constantly that Zelaya was overthrown because he wanted to change the constitution to allow re-election, which would be illegal. But in fact, the argument hinges primarily on the fact that other bodies, not the executive, are supposed to approve any such vote. Therefore Zelaya broke the law when he ordered government institutions to participate.

However, pages 39-40 do very briefly make the argument that "the fact of convoking a constitutive National Assembly is evidence of trying to abolish the current Constitution." By extension, the forbidden article would necessarily be reformed, which is illegal. I am not a lawyer, but I found this curious, because the vote did not convoke any commission (and by its wording, had no power to do so). Perhaps convoking it would be illegal, but it was never convoked.

Nonetheless, I cannot find anywhere in the documents any accusation regarding Zelaya's intent to seek re-election.

Second, I laughed at page 49, which instructed the military to detain Zelaya because he was a threat to flee ("existiendo un peligro de Fuga").

Third, there are over 70 pages of documents, sometimes in dense legalese, thought through by opposition lawyers and officially stamped all over the place. Yet Zelaya was never allowed to defend himself from the charges they contained.