2024-03-19 19:43:35
By Ana FERNÁNDEZ
UPDATE WITH DATE OF THE SENTENCE AND REACTION OF THE PROSECUTOR
The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was found guilty this Friday of drug trafficking and arms trafficking by a jury in a federal court in New York, at the end of a historic trial that could lead him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
After a day and a half of deliberations, the 12-person jury announced its unanimous verdict shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time: guilty of the three charges of which the prosecution accused him.
His sentence will be announced on June 26, the prosecutor’s office announced.
“I’m innocent, tell the world, I love you,” said Hernández, 55, as he left the room, addressing his relatives, including two sisters-in-law, who came to protect him – neither his wife nor his children received a visa to travel to New York. -, as well as the three generals who testified in his favor at the trial.
Flanked by his lawyers, after hearing from Judge Kevin Castel that the jury had reached a verdict, the former president appeared to pray.
He followed the verdict, shaking his head in disbelief as the jury foreman answered each of the questions the judge asked to establish his guilt.
His lawyer Raymond Colon announced that his client will appeal the ruling. “He maintains that he is innocent,” he said.
The prosecution, which claims that the former president created a narco-state during his presidency (2014-2022), accused him of conspiring to traffic drugs to the United States, as well as conspiring to traffic weapons and possession and which are punishable by life imprisonment.
– Own benefit –
The former president “had every opportunity to be a force for good in Honduras, instead, he chose to abuse power and the country for his own benefit,” lamented the court’s prosecutor, Damian Williams, in a statement after hearing the ruling.
JOH, the acronym by which he is known in his country, will thus follow in the footsteps of his brother Tony Hernández and Geovanny Fuentes, a close collaborator of his, who are serving life sentences in the United States. Others convicted of the same crime are Fabio Lobo, son of former president Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014), and deputy Fredy Renán Nájera.
According to the US prosecutor’s office, Hernández participated and protected between 2004 and 2022 – when he was a deputy, president of Congress and then President of the Republic – a network that sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States.
In exchange, he would have received millions of dollars from drug cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, from the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán – sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.
– «Damage to the country» –
“Today justice has been done,” said euphoric human rights activist Lida Perdomo outside the court, where nearly a hundred boisterous Hondurans gathered to await the verdict.
“We hope they sentence him to at least three life sentences and that would be little to make him pay for all the damage he did to my country,” he told AFP.
The former president turned Honduras into a “super highway” through which a good part of the drugs from Colombia destined for the United States passed, the prosecution recalled during the trial.
Extradited in April 2022 to the United States, three months after handing over the presidency to his successor, the leftist Xiomara Castro, the convicted man is the author of the famous phrase “We are going to shove drugs under their noses (to the Americans). ) and they won’t even notice,” according to a witness.
– «Hard failure» –
When asked by AFP, defense lawyer Renato Stabile, with misty eyes, said that “obviously the ruling is harsh, but (the former president) is mentally very strong.”
This faithful collaborator of the government of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021) came to boast of Washington’s praise for his government’s work in the fight against drug trafficking.
Prosecutor Jacob H. Gutwillig reminded the jury that the accused maintained a double discourse: in public he promoted laws against drug trafficking and extraditions of drug traffickers to the United States and he met with US officials and authorities, but “none of this undoes what the accused did behind the doors.
“He’s a drug dealer,” he concluded.
Since 2014, Honduras has extradited 38 people accused of drug trafficking to the United States.
Former national police chief Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla and former police officer Mauricio Hernández, who were to be tried with the former president, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking a few days before the start of the trial. Their sentences will be known in the coming months.
Many of the dozen witnesses presented by the prosecution revealed corruption and the close links between politics and drug trafficking.
“The political elite, which is also the economic one, has operated in complete impunity” for the last 15 years, since the 2009 coup d’état, emboldened by “the support it received from foreign governments even though they knew it was deeply involved with drug trafficking,” American activist Karen Spring of the Honduras Solidarity Network organization told AFP.
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© Agence France-Presse