Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced Wednesday in New York to 45 years in prison for international drug trafficking.
Accused of having helped ship hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, the man who was head of state from 2014 to 2022 was found guilty in March of criminal conspiracy for drug trafficking and possession of weapons.
Mr. Hernandez was also ordered to pay an $8 million fine.
“Juan Orlando Hernandez abused his position as President of Honduras to turn the country into a narco-state where violent drug traffickers could operate with near impunity, and the people of Honduras and the United States were forced to do so. suffer the consequences,” US Justice Secretary Merrick Garland said in March.
The former president of Honduras has proclaimed his innocence, claiming to be “a victim of cartel revenge”.
But according to US prosecutors, he participated in and protected a network that shipped approximately 400 tons of cocaine to the United States between 2004 and 2022, while he was a member of Congress, speaker of Congress and then president of the Republic.
In return, he allegedly received millions of dollars from cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, led by the famous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, who has since been convicted in the United States.
Sudden fall
In exchange for these bribes, Juan Orlando Hernandez “protected the drug traffickers from investigations, (avoiding their) arrest and extradition”, assure the American authorities.
Juan Orlando Hernandez was extradited in April 2022 to the United States.
The fall was brutal for “JOH”, as he is called in his country. He had barely ceded power to the new left-wing president Xiomara Castro when the former head of state found himself chained at the wrists and ankles during his arrest in front of the cameras.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, who presented himself as the champion of the fight against drug trafficking, was initially seen by the United States as an ally in this fight. In 2017, Washington was one of the first capitals to recognize his re-election while the opposition denounced fraud against a backdrop of demonstrations which left around thirty dead.
With his conviction, Juan Orlando Hernandez joins other former Latin American leaders tried and convicted in the United States, such as Panamanian Manuel Noriega in 1992 for drug trafficking and Guatemalan Alfonso Portillo in 2014 for money laundering.