2024-07-05 23:03:42
The United States courts sentenced former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison on Wednesday, after he was found guilty of drug and arms trafficking on March 8.
At a hearing in New York, Judge Kevin Castel also indicated that Hernández, 55, who served two consecutive terms as president from 2014 to 2022, must pay a fine of $8 million and serve five years of supervised release at the end of his prison sentence.
“Juan Orlando Hernández’s role was to use his political power as president of Congress and as president of Honduras to limit the risk to drug traffickers in exchange for money,” the judge said when reading the sentence.
“I am innocent and I was unfairly and improperly accused,” said the president, who arrived at the courtroom walking with a cane because he had an accident while playing soccer, according to his lawyer Renato Stabile.
Hernández listened standing to Judge Castel’s sentence, who was very harsh in his arguments, although he imposed practically the minimum sentence for the three charges for which he was found guilty by a jury on March 8.
– «Narco-State» –
A loyal collaborator of the government of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), Hernández 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.
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 400 tons of cocaine to the United States, the prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.
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.
Other defendants in the same case, including his brother Tony Hernández and his close collaborator Geovanny Fuentes, have already been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Also in the same case, former Honduran police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as “El Tigre,” and police officer Mauricio Hernández Pineda pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, avoiding sitting in the dock with the former president.
Since 2014, around fifty Hondurans accused of drug trafficking have been extradited or have voluntarily surrendered to the United States justice system.
