Juan Orlando Hernández, the disgraced previous president of Honduras, has actually been sentenced to 45 years in jail for allowing drug traffickers to utilize his military and nationwide police to assist deliver lots of drug into the United States.
United States federal judge P Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a United States jail and fined him $8m. A jury convicted him in March in a Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was carefully followed in his home nation.
“I am innocent,” Hernández stated at his sentencing. “I was mistakenly and unjustly implicated.”
Castel called Hernández a “two-faced political leader starving for power” who safeguarded a choose group of traffickers.
Hernández remained in a complete green jail uniform as he stood in court with his legal representatives. 2 United States marshals guaranteed him.
District attorneys had actually looked for a sentence of life in jail, plus 30 years.
Hernández, 55, was the very first previous president to be condemned of drug trafficking in the United States given that the Panamanian strongman Gen Manuel Noriega was founded guilty in 1992.
His conviction marked an amazing fall from grace for a president who was as soon as thought about among Washington’s leading allies in the area.
Hernández served 2 terms as the leader of the Central American country of approximately 10 million individuals.
He was apprehended at his home in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, 3 months after leaving workplace in 2022 and was extradited to the United States in April of that year.
United States district attorneys state Hernández dealt with drug traffickers as long earlier as 2004, taking countless dollars in allurements as he increased from rural congressman to president of the nationwide congress and after that to the nation’s greatest workplace.
Throughout closing arguments, one district attorney informed the court that Hernández had actually “paved a drug superhighway to the United States”.
In his statement, Hernández acknowledged that drug cash was paid to essentially all political celebrations in Honduras, however he rejected accepting allurements himself.
Hernández firmly insisted in a prolonged declaration made through an interpreter that his trial was unjustified due to the fact that he was not permitted to consist of proof that would have triggered the jury to discover him innocent. He stated he was being maltreated by political leaders and drug traffickers.
“It’s as if I had actually been tossed into a deep river with my hands bound,” he stated.
Trial witnesses consisted of traffickers who confessed obligation for lots of murders and stated Hernández was a passionate protector of a few of the world’s most effective drug dealerships, consisting of the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is now serving a life jail term in the United States.
His sibling, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a previous Honduran congressman, was sentenced to life in a United States jail in 2021 for his own conviction on drug charges.