Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was considered by the United States a crucial ally in the war on drugs. Now, federal prosecutors accuse him of ruling his nation as a “narco-state” by collecting millions of dollars from violent cartels to finance his rise to power.
Almost two years after his arrest and extradition to the United States, Hernández appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday on charges related to drug and weapons trafficking.
A jury has been chosen and opening statements were scheduled for Wednesday in a trial that Judge P. Kevin Castel expects to last two to three weeks.
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It is a resounding fall from grace for a political leader whom both Democratic and Republican governments considered beneficial in the fight against drug trafficking and in helping to stop the waves of migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States.
The fact that Hernández is being tried in the United States and not in his native country underscores the institutional weakness of the Central American nation, said Raúl Pineda Alvarado, a Honduran political analyst and former legislator for the National Party, to which Hernández belonged. .
“For Hondurans, it means a demonstration of the weakness of our democracy, understood as the division of powers,” said Pineda Alvarado. “Politicians are not subject to any control.”
According to federal authorities, for almost two decades, Hernández profited from the trade of hundreds of tons of cocaine brought into the United States, and at times even collaborated with the powerful Mexican Sinaloa cartel.
The millions of dollars from drug trafficking that Hernández began receiving around 2004 in turn served to finance his rise, from legislator representing a rural province in western Honduras to president of the National Congress, and then two presidential terms. from 2014 to 2022, according to the prosecution.
In exchange for the bribes that underpinned their political aspirations, prosecutors say, drug traffickers were allowed to operate in the country with almost total impunity: they received information that allowed them to evade authorities and even police escorts for their shipments.
During his first successful presidential campaign, Hernández received 1.6 million dollars from a trafficker to finance said campaign and those of other politicians from his conservative party.
His brother received a $1 million donation from notorious Sinaloa boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, with the promise that cartel shipments would have free passage through Honduras if Hernández was elected.
Federal prosecutors in New York spent years investigating Honduran drug organizations until they reached the person many believed was at the top: Hernández.
He was arrested at his home in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa in February 2022, three months after the end of his presidential term, and extradited to the United States in April of that same year.
Attorney General Merrick Garland then said that Hernández abused his position as president “to operate the country like a narco-state.”
Hernández’s lawyers declined to comment ahead of the trial, in which prosecutors are expected to rely on testimony from drug traffickers and security force officials and corrupt Honduran politicians.
The former president, who earned a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany campus, has steadfastly defended his innocence, and claims that the accusations are revenge by drug traffickers whom he had extradited to the United States.
Hernández faces federal charges that include criminal association for drug trafficking and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, his co-defendants – former Honduran national police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla and Hernández’s cousin Mauricio Hernández Pineda – pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges. He is in the same Manhattan courthouse where his trial is being held.
