(Tegucigalpa) Juan Orlando Hernandez presented himself during his eight years as president of Honduras as a champion in the fight against drug traffickers but he ends up in the same bag: the justice of his country definitively accepted on Monday extradite him to the United States, where he is being prosecuted for importing more than 500 tons of cocaine.
Posted at 4:35 p.m.
The Supreme Court of Justice confirmed the decision of a judge of first instance, dismissing the former head of state (2014-2022) of his final appeal.
The one his compatriots call “JOH”, in reference to his initials, was elected for a first four-year term in 2014. He then became at 45 the youngest president of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the world. Central America, and the world’s most violent non-war zone, with an annual rate of nearly 80 murders per 100,000 population.
“JOH” boasted during his tenure of having halved this homicide rate by fighting criminal gangs, the sinister “maras”, and by extraditing more than twenty drug traffickers to the United States, while that a dozen were forced to surrender to American justice.
However, during the 2021 trial in New York of his younger brother Antonio “Tony” Hernandez sentenced to life, a prosecutor claimed that the president of Honduras, in exchange for his protection, had received millions of dollars from drug traffickers, including notorious Mexican criminal Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“I am innocent, I am the victim of a revenge and a conspiracy,” wrote JOH in a handwritten letter written in prison, addressed to the members of the CSJ before their final decision.
military high school
Juan Orlando Hernandez was born on October 28, 1968, to a rural, middle-class family in the West Country. He held agricultural enterprises, a hotel, a radio and a television station there.
Athletic physique, salt-and-pepper hair and a broad smile, he boasts a daily sport practice. He studied at a military high school, from which he graduated as a reserve second lieutenant in the infantry.
A law graduate in Honduras, “JOH” also obtained a master’s degree in public administration in New York in 1995. He married a lawyer, with whom he had four children.
In 1998, he entered politics by being elected deputy.
In 2009, he supported the politico-military coup against President Manuel Zelaya, the husband of the current left-wing president, and was elected President of Parliament.
He then obtained the nomination of the National Party (PN, conservative) for the presidential elections of 2013.
From his seat as President of Parliament, he promotes the election of four of the five judges of the Constitutional Court, the very one who will approve his candidacy for a second term, in defiance of the Fundamental Law.
His re-election, tainted with fraud, will be challenged by major popular demonstrations, harshly repressed.
Shortly before, still at the presidency of the Parliament, he was the instigator of the creation of the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), strong of 5000 elements from the army, and considered by his opponents as his praetorian guard.
Once in the presidency of the Republic, Juan Orlando Hernandez had also launched social programs for the distribution of food and housing to the poorest, intended, according to his opponents, to buy votes and support.