2024-07-07 02:39:10
A jury found him guilty on March 8 of three charges of drug and weapons trafficking, which could lead to a life sentence, like other defendants in the same case, including his brother Tony Hernández and his close collaborator Geovanny Fuentes.
Judge Kevin Castel is expected to announce the sentence at a hearing scheduled for 11:00 a.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday.
In an attempt to avoid a life sentence, defense attorney Renato Stabile argues in sentencing arguments submitted to the judge on Friday, June 21, that the minimum sentence provided for by law – 10 years for the drug trafficking charge and 30 for the weapons charge – “will satisfy the objectives of the sentence” and asks that the judge not impose “an additional penalty.”
However, that minimum sentence would leave the 55-year-old former president practically spending the rest of his life behind bars in a maximum security prison in the United States.
Stabile reminds the judge that his client has always claimed his “innocence” alleging that he was “wrongly” convicted based on the “word of Honduran drug traffickers and murderers – the same ones he fought – who are looking for revenge and to get out of jail.”
His client “will appeal his conviction by all legal means,” he says. “He will never give up.”
Co-accused in the same case are former Honduran police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as “El Tigre,” and police officer Mauricio Hernández Pineda, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, thus avoiding sitting in the dock with the former president.
“I’m innocent”
“I am innocent, not guilty,” Hernández claims in another 159-page document sent to Judge Castel last week, in which he details the laws he promoted and his collaboration with the U.S. government to end organized crime and gang violence that claimed the lives of nearly 88,000 people, making Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
“I was accused and convicted unjustly and incorrectly,” says the man who from 2014 to 2022, for two consecutive terms, led the destiny of Honduras.
The investigation and trial against him is “full of errors and injustices,” he laments. “The prosecution and the agents did not act with due diligence in the investigation to find out the whole truth.”
In the letter he accuses both the authorities who preceded him and agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, of “not doing what they should have done” to confront the violence of organized crime.
He also recalled that his government “collaborated and coordinated” the fight against drug trafficking with “different institutions and agencies of the US government” and was received at the White House by the presidents in office.
A loyal collaborator of the government of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), he boasted of Washington’s praise for his government’s work in the fight against drug trafficking.
But New York prosecutors accused him of creating a “narco-state” and turning Honduras into a “superhighway” through which much of the drug coming from Colombia passed.
Chapo’s money
Between 2004 and 2022 – from his positions as deputy, president of Congress and then president of the Republic – Hernández participated in and protected a network that sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States, according to the accusation.
In exchange, he allegedly received millions of dollars from drug cartels, including Mexican drug lord Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, who is sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
Extradited to the United States in April 2022, three months after handing over the presidency to his successor, the leftist Xiomara Castro, Hernández is said to have been the author of the famous phrase: “We are going to shove drugs right under the gringos’ noses and they won’t even notice,” according to a witness at a trial.
Since 2014, around fifty Hondurans accused of drug trafficking have been extradited or have voluntarily surrendered to the United States justice system.
© 2024 AFP
