TEGUCIGALPA -- The newly installed Honduran government withdrew from the Organization of American States Friday night, after a tense visit from the hemisphere's top diplomat who urged the return of the nation's deposed leader.

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza visited Honduras Friday on a mission to convince members of the Supreme Court and other civic leaders to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a pre-dawn raid Sunday.

Rebuffed at every turn, Insulza announced that "conditions did not exist'' for Zelaya's return and that his toppling was a coup d'etat.

Hours later, acting President Roberto Micheletti and vice chancellor Martha Lorena de Casco announced Honduras planned to withdraw from the region's key diplomatic organization. The move preempts an OAS General Assembly meeting scheduled for Saturday, where Honduras was widely expected to be suspended from the group for overthrowing a democratically elected leader.

The Herald article goes on with some very fresh hard information about the coup.  Honduran Army attorney Col. Inestroza fesses up that the Army made the call to kidnap and deport Zelaya, and broke the law when they did it.  

''We know there was a crime there,'' said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. ``In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.''

The 'justification' is:

So when the powers of state united in demanding his ouster, the military put a pajama-clad Zelaya on a plane and sent him to Costa Rica. The rationale: Had Zelaya been jailed, throngs of loyal followers would have erupted into chaos and demanded his release with violence, Inestroza said.

''What was more beneficial, remove this gentleman from Honduras or present him to prosecutors and have a mob assault and burn and destroy and for us to have to shoot?'' he said. ``If we had left him here, right now we would be burying a pile of people.''

There's been a lot of debate on the Internet about whether or not the Honduras Constitution provided impeachment or other forms of legal prosecution for presidential crimes, so this pretty much points in the direction that there were legal options short or deportation.