• Latin America: Thousands of Hondurans demand the president's departure after being accused of drug trafficking

The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has accused this Thursday of absurd and ridiculous the accusation of the New York Prosecutor's Office according to which he and his brother Juan Antonio Hernández received money from Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán.

Juan Orlando Hernández wrote on the social network Twitter that "the claim itself is 100% false, absurd and ridiculous ... This is less serious than 'Alice in Wonderland."

The Prosecutor's Office will present in the trial that follows against the president's brother and former deputy that he received from Chapo, then leader of the Sinaloa cartel, 1.5 million dollars to be delivered to the president of Honduras.

The Honduran Presidency wanted to clarify yesterday in a statement "in a blunt manner that during the trial of the citizen Juan Antonio Hernández, a New York prosecutor at no time stated that the president of the Republic, Juan Orlando Hernández, received money from the drug trafficker Joaquín Guzmán ".

Therefore, he adds, "he rejects the irresponsible misinformation published without any evidence this afternoon by some media outlets about the alleged statements by a New York prosecutor against the Honduran president.

He also states that "the only existing reference of the drug trafficker Joaquín Guzmán in Honduras is the sending of a mysterious jet to a high Honduran character and then abandoned at Toncontín airport in February 2006, being President Manuel Zelaya Rosales."

He also noted that Guzmán and "his extradited Honduran partners faced the brave Government of President Hernández, which ended the reigns of impunity they had before 2014."

During the Hernández administration, Honduras has given extradition to the United States to about twenty drug traffickers.

He adds that since 2014, 24 extradition processes have been developed, which has also led to the voluntary delivery of another dozen drug traffickers, thus dismantling the six most powerful drug cartels operating in Honduras.

The Government of Honduras "asks the national and international community not to be surprised by novel and incongruous stories to draw attention in a malicious and perverse way."

The brother of the Honduran president has appeared today before the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, where after the selection of the 12 jurors and the six substitutes, the trial began in the United States for drug trafficking.

During the presentation of the case at the beginning of the trial, prosecutor Jason Richman did not specify how he received the money from Chapo, nor if it was used in the election campaign of Juan Orlando Hernández.

The president's brother, also known as 'Tony', has been imprisoned in New York since the end of 2018 after being arrested that year in Miami, and is accused of four drug trafficking crimes, possession of firearms to defend his cargo and lie to the authorities , of which he has pleaded not guilty.

The defense lawyer, Omar Malone, said today that the prosecution has no evidence against his client, and that Hernandez has a weapons license , so the accusation of possession of the same would be invalidated.

He also pointed out that the accusations his client is a revenge of drug traffickers for having consented to President Juan Orlando Hernández the extradition to the US of several capos.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Drug trafficking

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