Previous Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez was found guilty of trafficking hundreds of tons of methamphetamine into the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison by a court in New York on Wednesday.
Before punishment, anti-Herrera demonstrators gathered outside the Manhattan court, carrying placards decribing the former head of government’s crimes, with one saying,” Narco authorities– makes the people emigrate.”
Judge Kevin Castel, the disgraced leader, remarked,” Mr. Hernandez ‘ function was to use his political power as chairman of Congress and president of Honduras to reduce the dangers of drug traffickers in exchange of money.
He claimed Hernandez assisted in the shipment of 400 tons of drugs, which were worth$ 10 billion at market value, to the United States, as well as providing police and military support.
In a statement ahead of punishment, Hernandez, who wore prison clothing and used a walking stick to provide judge, was interrupted by the prosecutor for contesting the prosecution’s outcome and insisting he was wrongly charged.
The word, which also included an$ 8 million fine, was less than the life prison that prosecutors had sought– although Hernandez’s time, 55, means he may die behind bars.
” He’s going to do every second possible legal remedy that he can pursue”, Hernandez’s lawyer Renato Stabile told reporters outside court.
War on drugs
Hernandez, who US national prosecutors said turned his Northern British country into a “narco- state” during his 2014- 2022 presidency, has recently indicated through his constitutional team he had attractiveness his conviction.
Since 2004, long before he became president, he was found guilty of facilitating the trafficking of hundreds of tons of cocaine, largely from Colombia and Venezuela, to the United States via Honduras.
Hernandez used the medication funds to strengthen himself and funding his political campaign, and committed electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 elections, prosecutors said.
He had claimed to be the anti-drug campaign’s hero, and Washington first saw him as a collaborator.
In 2017, the United States became one of the first nations to acknowledge his re-election, while the opposition blasted scam amid violent demonstrations that claimed the lives of around 30 people.
In response to stress from Washington, he was arrested in the United States in 2022, using a laws he himself helped pass as president, which he claimed he had helped pass in exchange for millions of dollars in money.
Hernandez “abused his power to support one of the largest and most aggressive drug trafficking theories in the world, and the Honduran and American citizens suffered the consequences,” according to US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The fall of Hernandez, who is known in his country as” JOH”, was dramatic.
The cheerful head was shackled and paraded in front of editors as soon as he handed over control to the new left-wing leader Xiomara Castro.
Hernandez follows in the footsteps of another past Latin American heads of state who were found guilty in the country, including Alfonso Portillo from Guatemala and Manuel Noriega from Panama in 1992.
The small, sport leader, who had previously worked as an official before becoming a lawyer, completed a master’s degree in 1995 in New York. He was known for getting his military haircut.
His legitimate woes began in earnest in 2018 when his nephew, Juan Antonio Hernandez, was arrested in Miami and sentenced in March 2021 to life prison for “large- level” drug smuggling.
Hernandez claimed that he was a victim of “revenge” by the drug lords after being arrested in Honduras in February 2022, many of whom testified against him in New York.
