File photo shows Honduran police participating in an operation in a suburb of the capital Tegucigalpa.
A Honduran court has issued arrest warrants for five police officers accused of killing seven gang members, prosecutionâ„¢s spokesman says.
Elvis Guzman of the Honduran attorney generalâ„¢s office said the accusations against the five include assassination, illegal breaking and entering, and abuse of authority.
The warrants came after a yearlong investigation into a 2011 shooting in a suburb of the city San Pedro Sula located in the northwest part of the country.
The police have not yet commented on the arrest warrants or given any detailed information about the five police officers.
All of the five victims were members of one of the Hondurasâ„¢ criminal organizations, the 18th Street.
The gang has accused the countryâ„¢s police of having death squads, which commit extra-judicial killings rather than taking the members to be convicted in court.
An investigation by the Associated Press found that since January, at least five gang members in the capital of Tegucigalpa have disappeared or were found dead after being seen in police custody.
In 2012, Juan Carlos Bonilla was appointed the countryâ„¢s top police chief despite alleged links to death squads a decade earlier.
Bonilla was accused in a 2002 internal affairs report of being involved in three homicides and linked to 11 other deaths and disappearances.
He was later acquitted by a court in one of the killings and the other cases were never fully investigated.
According to the United Nations, Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world with 91.6 killings per 100,000 people.
CAH/PR
This article originally appeared on: Press TV