The former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was extradited on Thursday April 21 to the United States where a New York court intends to try him for his participation in a gigantic traffic of 500 tons of cocaine between 2004 and 2022. He incurs life imprisonment.

Escorted and handcuffed, Juan Orlando Hernandez, in power between 2014 and 2022, boarded a US Anti-Drug Agency plane, which took off at 2:27 p.m. local time (8:27 p.m. GMT) from a base of the Honduran army in Tegucigalpa.

The 53-year-old ex-head of state, who ceded power on January 27 to new left-wing president Xiomara Castro, was arrested less than three weeks later, on February 15, at his residence in the capital. .

The day before, the Southern District of New York court had filed a formal request for the extradition of the right-wing ex-president for his alleged participation in a "criminal association (which) transported more than 500 tons of cocaine to the States -United".

The man who presented himself as the champion in the fight against drug trafficking was first seen by the United States as an ally in this fight.

Washington was in 2017 one of the first capitals to recognize his re-election when the opposition denounced fraud against the backdrop of demonstrations that left around 30 people dead.

"Conspiracy"

American justice has since sentenced his brother, ex-MP "Tony" Hernandez, in March 2021 to life imprisonment for having worked alongside drug traffickers in this vast trafficking to the United States.

New York prosecutors say Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a "narco-state" by implicating the military and police in smuggling drugs to the United States.

The former head of the national police between 2012 and 2013, Juan Carlos "Tigre" Bonilla, arrested on March 9 will also be extradited soon, prosecuted by the same court for having "supervised" the operations.

"I am innocent, I am the victim of a revenge and a conspiracy", wrote JOH - his initials and his nickname - in a handwritten letter written in prison intended for the members of the Supreme Court 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".

With AFP

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