Stringer / Reuters

Honduras President Porfirio Lobo speaks during a news conference at the Francisco Morazan Military Academy in Tegucigalpa on Friday. Lobo asserted that there is a conspiracy brewing against him that could mimic the coup that removed former president Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

Honduras' president on Friday accused a group led by a powerful publishing magnate of plotting to repeat "the crisis of 2009," when his predecessor, Manuel Zelaya, was whisked out of the country at gunpoint in a civilian coup.  

President Porfirio Lobo, speaking at a military event, did not use the word coup, but referred several times to the June 2009 incident that caused a political and economic crisis in this Central American country that in many ways has still not been resolved.  

Both drug trafficking and killing have risen since then in Honduras, where two-thirds of the 8.2 million people live in poverty. With a homicide rate of 91 per 100,000 residents, it is often called the most violent country in the world.

Lobo said he knows who is meeting and how, though he did not say why they were conspiring or whether they were planning to overthrow his government. Lobo has accused groups in the past of plotting against him without providing details.  

"What they're doing is a danger to the country," he said. "These citizens have not learned. We had a crisis in 2009 and they want to repeat it in 2012."

Gen. Rene Osorio, chief of the armed forces, appeared with Lobo, saying he supports the president. He said he has provided Lobo with intelligence reports but said they are confidential.

"In the armed forces, no one is thinking about a coup d'etat," Osorio said. "We will continue to inform the president with investigation and intelligence to give him our support."

In 2009, the populist-leaning Zelaya was seized at gunpoint by soldiers and flown out of the country in a coup that had wide support among the political elites, including members of Zelaya's own political party.

Zelaya, who lived in exile but has since returned and formed his own political party, expressed support for Lobo on Friday.

"In Honduras, we have a dictatorship by the oligarchy," he said.

A rich landowner like Lobo, Zelaya angered the business elite that had run Honduras for decades with a campaign to rewrite the constitution, promising the poor they would get a voice in shaping the future of the country. He also closely aligned himself with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Zelaya was deposed when he ignored a Supreme Court order to cancel a referendum on his grandiose plan.

Lobo was democratically elected in a previously scheduled election later that year and took office in January 2010.

He has been at odds with the same Supreme Court that supported Zelaya's ouster. The court shot down Lobo's plans to build private cities as a means of attracting investment and economic development. The Supreme Court next week is also expected to reject Lobo's plan to clean up the corrupt Honduran national police, which are often involved in killings and organized crime.  

Lobo said the leader of the conspiracy is Jorge Canahuati, owner of Grupo Opsa, which publishes El Heraldo and La Prensa, the country's two largest daily newspapers.

Canahuati denied any involvement in a statement published on his newspapers' websites. It called Lobo's comments reckless, unfounded and intimidating and said they are "endangering freedom of expression."

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Estbean Felix / AP

The bodies of inmates who were killed in a the deadliest prison fire in the last century were transported within the morgue in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – No one knows for sure what started the prison fire at the Comayagua prison 50 miles north of here. But everyone agrees that the hero is a convicted murderer, an inmate named Marco Antonio Bonilla.

Antonio Bonilla, who had just months left on his sentence, roamed more freely than the others and was the prison nurse. He is credited with saving hundreds of inmates on the day of the deadliest prison fire in the last century. The prison's six guards, spooked by the flames, either ran away or refused to unlock the cells -- witness accounts differ -- but Antonio Bonilla was unrelenting, even using a heavy bench to smash open a lock, according to witnesses.

The Valentine’s Day fire started late in the day and raced through five barracks at the Comayagua prison farm, burning and suffocating screaming men trapped behind locked doors.

The reasons given for how the fire started are many: An angry inmate had threatened to torch the prison; inmates had been fighting over a mattress; an inmate had fallen asleep while smoking.   

Prisoners later said that the guard responsible for the keys threw them on the ground, while others said that Antonio Bonilla demanded them and started opening doors when the guard turned them over.

Inmate Jose Enrique Guevara said Antonio Bonilla used a bench to break open the lock on his cell block, No. 6, where the fire started. Enrique Guevara survived with burns.

There were 852 prisoners in the prison the night of the fire; on Tuesday, the total death toll had reached 360. Enrique Guevara's cell block was hit hard. Of the 105 prisoners crammed into rows of bunks four levels high, four survived.

Estbean Felix / AP

A forensic worker hangs a list of the names of inmates whose remains would be returned to their relatives at the morgue in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The prison fire killed 360 men.

In his weekly meeting with ministers broadcast on Channel 8, President Porfirio Lobo said he would give Antonio Bonilla a presidential pardon for his murder conviction.

"He put himself at incredible risk trying to save lives during the tragedy," Lobo said.

The United States Embassy in Honduras issued a statement saying investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms believed the fire was an accident. They found that crowding, poor safety practices and the presence of flammable materials in and around the tightly packed bunk beds caused the rapid spread of the flames.

Inmates had clothes, curtains and small electrical devices hung from their bunks. Some also had materials to light makeshift kitchen stoves, according to some of the survivors.

Honduras has experienced deadly fires in its overcrowded prisons in the past, Reuters reported.

In 2003, 68 people died inside a prison in northern Honduras when a fire broke out during a riot and investigators later found guards had killed inmates with machetes and guns on the inside. A year later, more than 100 inmates died in another prison fire in the city of San Pedro Sula.

This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.

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