Former President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras has been found guilty of a drug tracking case against him, by the United States of America.
Hernandez was found guilty by an American jury on Friday, after a two-week trial against him in Manhattan federal court.
The former President had been accused by the prosecutors, who alleged that he conspired with drug cartels during his tenure as the President, and they moved more than 400 tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States.
According to the prosecutors, Hernández in exchange for his collaboration with the cartel, received millions of dollars in bribes that he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics.
Consequently, the 55-year-old former President was extradited to the United States in 2022 after the completion of his second term in office, on charges of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, conspiracy to possess firearms and destructive devices for drug trafficking, and possession of this type of weapon during the drug trafficking conspiracy.
However, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for each of the charges against him.
Hernández who ruled Honduras between 2014 and 2022, was said to have “protected and enriched the drug traffickers in his inner circle,” the Justice Department said, citing his use of executive power to support extraditions of certain drug traffickers to the US “who threatened his grip on power” while “promising drug traffickers who paid him and followed his instructions that they would remain in Honduras.”
It was also alleged that Hernandez conspirators relied on the Honduran National Police to protect cocaine loads as they moved through the country.
However, the former President denied the charges against him and testified in his defence earlier this week.
A lawyer representing him said on Friday, that the conviction would be appealed.
“He’s still strong, but he’s quite disillusioned,” Raymond Colon, the attorney, said of the former president.
“It’s a tragedy,” he added, calling Hernandez “a nobleman who fought for the same goals that the US had in terms of the war against drugs.”
Also speaking in a statement, the US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, maintained that Hernández “abused his position as President of Honduras, to operate the country as a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity, and the people of Honduras and the United States were forced to suffer the consequences.”
Garland added, “As today’s conviction demonstrates, the Justice Department is disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go.”
