The Honduran Supreme Court (SCJ) on Monday ordered the extradition of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez to the United States where he is being prosecuted for drug trafficking. He now has no recourse.
The fall was brutal. No sooner had he ceded power, on January 27, to the new left-wing president Xiomara Castro, than the brand new ex-head of state (2014-2022) found himself chained to the wrists and ankles during his arrest on February 15 in front of the cameras.
On March 17, a trial extradition judge granted a request by the Southern District of New York court to extradite the 53-year-old right-wing ex-president for participating in a “conspiracy (which) transported more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States”.
On Monday, the members of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) of Honduras, meeting in plenary assembly, rejected the appeal made by his defence.
“The trial judge’s decision to grant the extradition of Juan Orlando Hernandez is confirmed,” said CSJ spokesman Melvin Duarte.
The wife of the former head of state, Ana Garcia, went Monday with some supporters in front of the Tegulcigalpa courthouse to claim his innocence and pray for him. “If a citizen is judged, he must be in (his) country,” she said.
“We are ready and confident that we will be able to demonstrate in US justice that these accusations are a plot of revenge by Honduran drug traffickers” against Hernández, the former president’s family said in a statement.
According to the American prosecutors in charge of the case in New York, Mr. Hernandez is a “co-instigator” of the traffic and made Honduras a “narco-state” by implicating the army and the police in the trafficking of drugs to United States.
The former Honduran head of state is said to have received millions of dollars from various drug trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and other countries.
In exchange for these bribes, Juan Orlando Hernandez, known in his country by the initials JOH, “protected the drug traffickers from investigations, (avoiding their) arrest and extradition”, assure the American authorities.
In 2013, “Hernandez accepted approximately $1 million from drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo,” they add.
– “Conspiracy” –
“I am innocent, I am the victim of a revenge and a conspiracy,” JOH wrote in a handwritten letter written in prison, addressed to the members of the CSJ before their final decision.
These accusations are, according to him, a “revenge of the cartels”, “an orchestrated plot so that no government will ever resist them again”.
But for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the former head of state “committed or facilitated acts of corruption and drug trafficking” and “used the earnings from illicit activities to (finance) political campaigns “.
If convicted, he faces life imprisonment, a sentence already imposed on his brother, former MP “Tony” Hernandez. New York prosecutors believe the former president was involved in the drug trade for which he was convicted in March 2021.
Eight years at the head of Honduras, JOH presented himself during his two terms as the champion in the fight against drug trafficking. Washington had first distinguished him as an ally in this fight and was one of the first capitals to recognize his re-election in 2017, when the opposition denounced fraud against the backdrop of demonstrations which left around 30 people dead.
“I never thought that this struggle for peace for us Hondurans would make us look like a narco-state,” Mr. Hernandez said in his letter. “I knew this fight would not be easy, that it was very risky”.
Now, the American authorities can at any time organize the transfer of the ex-president.