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Crazy news coming out of Central America as the former President of Honduras has just been sentenced to four decades in prison for moving the weight that would impress El Chapo.
According The New York TimesJuan Orlando Hernandez has just been sentenced to 45 years in prison after being found guilty of helping gangs smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States during his eight-year term as president of the small Central American country. Although he was friendly with the US and portrayed as an anti-drug ally, Hernández worked in collaboration with traffickers to import cocaine into America and was eventually arrested for his role in the operation in 2022 after leaving office in disgrace.
Having amassed millions of dollars for his dirty work from Honduras, Mexico and other countries during his presidency, Hernandez has singled himself out from lower-level workers who his lawyers say lied in an effort to get lighter prison sentences.
The New York Times References:
Prosecutors responded that Mr Hernández's arguments “reflect an alternative reality”. They wrote that he had shielded “his drug-trafficking co-conspirators from prosecution and extradition, giving safe harbor to violent, mass cocaine traffickers as they used Honduras as a springboard to pump cocaine into the United States.”
The verdict in Mr. Hernández's trial came after weeks of evidence that he had received millions of dollars from drug cartels in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere. In addition to statements from former traffickers, that evidence included testimony from a Honduran investigator and notebooks with Mr. Hernandez's initials that prosecutors detailed drug deals.
By early 2022, when Mr. Hernández was detained in Honduras less than a month after leaving office, he had become deeply unpopular there. His successor as president, Xiomara Castro, accused him of turning the country into a “narco-dictatorship,” and officials in the United States said Mr. Hernández had used drug money in both of his presidential campaigns to bribe election officials and rig the vote. . .
Hernandez was finally convicted and sentenced Wednesday (June 26) in Federal District Court in Manhattan. While some were upset that Hernandez received such a harsh sentence, others were happy with the news as they blame him for the dire situation Honduras is in these days.
More than Times:
Some in the overflow courtroom jeered as Mr. Hernandez, dressed in a dark suit, testified in his own defense. At one point he denied links to drug traffickers, even after prosecutors showed a photo of him posing at a World Cup soccer match in South Africa with a notorious drug kingpin.
After Mr. Hernández's sentencing, Honduran crowds celebrated outside the courthouse, chanting in Spanish and displaying an orange prison jumpsuit with handcuffs attached to a long chain. A woman held a sign that read: “No mercy for narcopolitics.”
