Asier Vera

Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-07:24

  • América Honduras extradites former president Hernández, wanted for drug trafficking in the US

  • Honduras They dictate provisional prison for the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, accused of drug trafficking in the US

This Friday, the 12 members of a jury in a federal court in New York unanimously convicted the former president of

Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández

(2014-2022) of the three crimes that the Prosecutor's Office charged him with: conspiring to traffic drugs and weapons and possess weapons, so he could face a minimum sentence of

40 years in prison

or even a triple life sentence, something that will be known on

June 26

when the sentence is scheduled to be issued.

Hernández, who was

extradited to the United States on April 21, 2022

, faced trial in the last two weeks and is now waiting for Judge

Kevin Castel

to hand down his sentence.

Specifically, the charge of 'conspiring to import cocaine' carries a sentence of between ten years and life: that of 'using and carrying machine guns and other destructive devices' to introduce drugs could carry a sentence of between 30 years and life and that of 'conspiring to use and carry machine guns' for the importation of drugs also contemplates a maximum sentence of life.

After hearing that he had been convicted, Hernández looked at his two sisters-in-law and made these only statements: "

I am innocent. I love you very much, tell the world

. "

It was of no use to him to testify before the court, whose judge upheld the three charges brought against him by the Prosecutor's Office, which maintains that the former president "participated in a violent corrupt drug trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine to USA".

Likewise, the Prosecutor's Office, which accused him of creating a "narco-state", revealed that Hernández's drug trafficking activity was not limited only to his two presidential terms, but to his entire political career since, at least, 2004, a period during which he used his public positions, "as well as the Police and the Army" to support

drug trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico

and other countries, among others, the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo .

For this reason, the Prosecutor's Office has already announced that it will request the maximum punishment, that is,

life imprisonment

, after accepting the testimonies made by several drug traffickers and former drug traffickers who testified against Hernández in exchange for a reduction in their sentences or a visa to live in the US.

Among the witnesses are the

son of former president Porfirio Lobo

(2010-2014), Fabio Lobo, sentenced to 25 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking, the former leader of the Los Cachiros cartel and former Honduran national police officer,

Mario Mejía Vargas.

, and former member of the Sinaloa cartel

Murillo Monroy

.

Precisely, Hernández's three lawyers tried to destroy these testimonies by ensuring that they were false with the sole intention of obtaining benefits and reducing their sentences.

Thus, they based his technical defense on remembering that when he presided over Honduras, he persecuted and extradited several drug traffickers to the United States and even promoted laws to seize their assets, so they framed the aforementioned testimonies in a personal vendetta.

However, the US accused him of having transported "more than 500,000 kilograms of cocaine through Honduras" to that country, for which he "participated in a violent drug trafficking conspiracy to receive shipments of multiple tons of cocaine sent to Honduras from Colombia and Venezuela, among other places," as detailed at the time by the US Embassy in Honduras.

Specifically, he indicated that the drugs were moved "by air and sea routes to transport them from western Honduras to the border with Guatemala and finally to the United States."

Hernández left power on January 27, 2022,

thus losing his immunity, which allowed his arrest and subsequent imprisonment on February 15 of that year, one day after the US requested his capture and extradition from Honduras.

The name of the former president and his links to drug trafficking came to light in the process that was carried out against his brother

Tony Hernández

, who was sentenced by a federal court in New York on March 30, 2021 to life imprisonment for trafficking. of cocaine on a large scale, two years after he was convicted of sending 185 tons of drugs to the United States.

The ruling already noted at that time that Tony Hernández was a Honduran congressman who, along with his brother, Juan Orlando Hernández, "played a leading role in a violent, state-sponsored drug trafficking conspiracy."

Likewise, on February 8, 2021, the Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez

was sentenced to life imprisonment in New York

, in whose trial, the prosecutor indicated that the former president agreed to an alliance with the Honduran Los Cachiros cartel to introduce thousands of kilos of cocaine in the US in exchange for bribes and protection for drug traffickers using security forces and police agencies.

Throughout the trial against Fuentes, it transpired that, in one of his conversations with Hernández, the latter conveyed to him that they were going to "shove the drugs into the gringos' faces" and they were not "going to even notice." .

"Failure of Honduran Justice"

After being found guilty, the president of Honduras,

Xiomara Castro

, lamented that "the failure of the Honduran justice system and its complicity with organized crime has been exposed," as well as "its impunity has been fully demonstrated, as we publicly denounced during long years since the resistance and before the international community, which, to a large extent, turned its back on us and provided support to the narco-dictatorship."

Thus, she denounced that "today it is once again proven that those who seized power on June 28, 2009," when they carried out a coup d'état against her husband, then president of Honduras, Manuel

Zelaya

, "kidnapped the State in complicity with the judicial system." to commit crimes and subjugate the people with repression and with blood and fire they attacked us in fraudulent electoral processes in 2013 and 2017, supported by the European Union and the United States."

Once sentenced in New York, Hernández will become the highest-ranking Latin American president convicted of drug trafficking, after Panamanian dictator

Manuel Antonio Noriega

(1983-1989), who was sentenced in 1992 in a Florida court to 40 years in prison. on charges of money laundering and drug trafficking and accused of having connections with the Colombian Medellín cartel, although his sentence was later reduced to 30 years.

Outside the New York court, about a hundred Hondurans celebrated the conviction of Hernández, 55, with applause and jumping, and held a vigil in which they showed photographs of the victims of what they called a " narco-government", among them, the environmental activist

Berta Cáceres

, shot dead in March 2016. Precisely, the daughter of the Lenca indigenous leader

Olivia Zúñiga Cáceres

celebrated the conviction with the following message on her social networks: "mom, after eight years in which the Honduran people continued your struggle, one of your murderers has been found guilty.