The following is InSight Crime’s translation of extracts from El Faro’s report:

Talking with a police chief in the town of El Paraiso, Copan.

Police Commissioner Juan Carlos Bonilla, “El Tigre,” is 45 years old, almost 25 of those serving in the institution. Now he is the chief of three Honduran provinces on the border with Guatemala and El Salvador. He is in charge of Copan, where we are now, on the border with Izabal and Zacapa, in Guatemala. Izabal and Zacapa are under the control of the Mendozas and the Lorenzanas, who according to the Guatemalan police are two of the families most emblematic of the country’s drug trade. He is also in charge of Nueva Ocotepeque, which borders on Chiquimula, Guatemala, and Calatenango, El Salvador. This Honduran department is on the border with San Fernando, the small Guatemalan town where the domain of the Texis Cartel begins. El Tigre is also the police chief of Lempira, which borders with Caltenango and Cabañas, in El Salvador.

Because he rules Copan, El Tigre is in charge of the point of exit of what, in Honduras, is known as the road of death, the cocaine trafficking route which begins at the border with Nicaragua, in the Caribbean province of Gracias a Dios, and which runs along the coast through four other departments before arriving at this border with Guatemala. Among them is Atlantida, the most violent province in Central America.

El Tigre is a colossal, fat man, almost 1.9 meters tall, with a hard face, as if it were sculpted out of rock, which reminds you of the Mexican Olmec heads. Among his colleagues he is famed for his bravery, and he likes to be known in this way.

“Everyone knows you don’t mess with me,” he says often.

In 2002, the police’s internal investigation unit accused El Tigre of taking part in a death squad against supposed criminals in San Pedro Sula, one of the most violent cities in Central America, with 119 murders for each 100,000 inhabitants. There was even a witness who said they had been present at one of the executions by this death squad made up, allegedly, of police, and called Los Magnificos. El Tigre had to pay a fine of 100,000 lempiras (more than $5,000) for his freedom during the trial. Then, in proceedings which many branded as rigged, where the main sponsor of the complaint, the ex-head of the prosecution unit, left her post mid-trial, Bonilla was exonerated.

Continue news article interpreted by Óscar Martínez here.