NEW YORK – He former president Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison prison in the US for conspiring with drug traffickers, after having been found guilty of drug and weapons trafficking on March 8.
In a hearing in New York, Judge Kevin Castel also indicated that Hernández, 55 years old and who was president from 2014 to 2022 for two consecutive terms, must pay $8 million in fines and serve 5 years of supervised release at the end. of his prison sentence.
“Juan Orlando Hernández’s role was to use his political power as president of Congress and as president of Honduras to limit the risk of drug traffickers in exchange for money,” said the judge when reading the sentence.
New York prosecutors accused Hernandez of creating a “narco-state” and turning Honduras into a “superhighway” through which much of the drug coming from Colombia passed.
On March 8, a popular jury found him guilty of three counts of drug and weapons trafficking.
According to the prosecution, between 2004 and 2022 – from his positions as deputy, president of Congress and then president of the Republic -, Hernández participated in and protected a network that sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States.
In exchange, he would have received millions of dollars from drug cartels, including Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.
Extradited in April 2022 to the United States, three months after handing over the presidency to his successor, the leftist Xiomara Castro, Hernández would have been the author of the famous phrase: “We are going to put drugs under the gringos’ noses and they will not They’re not going to even notice,” according to a witness in a trial.
Since 2014, fifty Hondurans accused of drug trafficking They have been extradited or voluntarily surrendered to United States justice.
Source: With information from AFP
