NEW YORK: A court in New York has sentenced former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez to 45 years in jail following he was convicted of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US. Anti-Hernandez protesters have staged a protest outside the Manhattan courthouse ahead of sentencing brandishing banners and placards decrying the ex-head of state’s crimes with one declaring “Narco government — makes the people emigrate.”
Judge Kevin Castel said that the role of Hernandez was to use his political authority as president of Congress and president of Honduras to limit the risks of drug traffickers in exchange of money. He stated that the former President provided military and police support and also assisted to send 400 tons of drugs — worth $10 billion at market prices — to the US. Hernandez’s lawyer Renato Stabile said that he is going to pursue every single possible legal remedy that he can pursue.
Hernandez, who US federal prosecutors stated turned his Central American nation into a “narco-state” during his presidency from 2014 to 2022, has earlier indicated through his legal team he would appeal his conviction.
The former President was convicted in March of having facilitated the smuggling of hundreds of tons of cocaine — mainly from Venezuela and Colombia— to the US via Honduras since 2004, starting long before his presidency.
Hernandez utilized the drug money to enrich himself and finance his political drive, and commit electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 presidential polls, prosecutors stated. The former President had also presented himself as a champion of the war on drugs and was initially seen by the US as an ally in the fight.
In 2017, the US was one of the first countries to recognize his re-election, while the opposition parties denounced fraud against a backdrop of violent protests that left around 30 people dead. Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022 as per the law he had himself passed as Congress president under pressure from the US, accused of aiding drug smugglers in return for millions of dollars in bribes. The fall of the former President, who is known in his state as “JOH,” was sudden. He follows in the footsteps of other former Latin American Presidents convicted in the US, including Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemala’s Alfonso Portillo in 2014.
He was known for his military haircut, having served as an officer before working as a lawyer, completing a degree in New York in 1995. His legal woes started in earnest in 2018 when his brother, Juan Antonio Hernandez, was apprehended in Miami and sentenced in March 2021 to life imprisonment for large-scale drug trafficking.
Following his arrest in Honduras in February 2022, the former President said he was a victim of “revenge” by the drug lords, many of whom testified against him in the US.
