Tonight, Joseph Budna remains in a Guatemalan prison, but the story of how he got there continues to hold the attention of the Belizean public.
And, despite staunch denials by the Commissioner of police, Budna is doubling down on his claims that he was abducted by Belize police, that they spoke to Compol Rosado and that he was handed over to the Guatemalan Police along with a file - like it was official. Here's his account to Jules Vasquez via phone this morning:
Voice of: Ryan Joseph Budna
"I went off and attempted to go towards my vehicle that is when a sky blue equinox drove, when I tried to run and I turned back up to run - I was running towards Banquitas - that Equinox blocked my way and men was coming running with "baston" in their hand with their masks on. I then turned around to run towards the police station and when I arrived by the police station compound there were about 3 other men with masks coming from the police station."
"And, the police came out - persons, persons saw this and they shout "police"."
"Police came out from the Orange Walk police formation because I was resisting while they were beating me in my head to knock me out."
"Police in uniform came out and these men identified themselves as police officers to these police so there were nothing that the uniform police could have done to this one here."
Jules Vasquez
"And how do you know these people are Belizean police officers if you couldn't see their face?"
Voice of: Ryan Joseph Budna
"I saw one of their face, I managed.... the one of them that went with us to Arenal. He was the one giving instruction. So I saw his face. That one was not using mask. He had on a white T-shirt."
"However, I can tell you that all of them were speaking English and Belizean Creole loud and clear. The guy said, you no hear shut the hell up and he cranked his gun and put it in the back of my head. When I got up, I was in Arenal. They took me out of the vehicle, and I told, there was three national civilian police with their vehicles stayed on the other side of the bridge."
"Three of them was there, and this guy just said, this is Joseph Budna, and they give them some documents, some folder, and they hand it over to them, and they identify themselves as Belize police officials."
