A former Honduran head of state, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a New York court on Wednesday after he was found guilty of smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
Protesters against Hernandez gathered outside the Manhattan courthouse beforehand holding up signs with some saying, “Narco government – makes the people emigrate,” and some calling him a narcoterrorist and narcopresident.
According to Judge Kevin Castel when making his pronouncement while the disgraced national leader looked on without any expression, Mr. Hernandez had used his political clout as National Congress’ president and Honduran’ president to minimize these traffickers’ risks for money-for example paying $10 million in bribes.
Hernandez also provided law enforcement and military support and helped send drugs weighing 400 tonnes worth approximately ten billion dollars at market value to America.
The judge interrupted Hernandez during his speech before sentencing who wore prison clothes and walked with a cane because he claimed that there was an error made in charging him so he should not be sentenced this way again.
He will go after every possible legal recourse available to him,” stated Renato Stabile, Hernandez’s counsel outside the courtroom.
War on drugs
Having been described by US federal attorneys as “narco-state” while serving from 2014-2022 as President of Central American nation, Hernandez has indicated through his lawyers that he aims to appeal against conviction.
Even before becoming President, he was found guilty last March for facilitating passage into the US via Honduran since 2004 many hundreds of metric tons mainly originating from Colombia and Venezuela.
To enrich himself through drug money financing campaigns whose aim were perpetrating electoral fraud in both elections held on 2013 plus 2017 is what prosecutors said in court about him
Initially presenting himself as championing the fight against drugs Washington saw him as such too.”
In 2017, the United States was one of the first countries to recognize his re-election, while the opposition denounced fraud against a backdrop of violent protests that left some 30 people dead.
In 2022, he was extradited to America under a law enacted when he was the then Speaker of Congress on pressure from Washington having been accused of helping drug traffickers in return for millions of dollars in bribes.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Hernandez “abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world, and the people of Honduran and the United States bore the consequences.”
The downfall of Hernandez who is referred as “JOH” in his country came suddenly.
Immediately after handing over power to his successor Xiomara Castro, amid revelations about alleged electoral frauds that marred his reign; journalists saw him paraded off wearing handcuffs.
Hernandez’s conviction means that following other ex-Latin American leaders such as Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemala’s Alfonso Portillo in 2014, who were also prosecuted by US courts for their crimes while serving as politicians, this is becoming a trend.
A slim built person with short hair cut which could be associated with military service having begun it as an officer before qualifying as an advocate and graduated with master degree from New York city in 1995.
It all started when his brother Juan Antonio Hernandez was apprehended in Miami in 2018 and got a life sentence for drug trafficking on large scale in March 2021.
He said he had been arrested because of the revenge of several drug lords who testified against him in New York after he was nabbed by police officers in Honduran during February 2022.
