Ex-president of Honduras guilty of drug crimes
NEW YORK – Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president of Honduras, has been found guilty of drug trafficking charges in a federal US court.
Hernández was convicted on Friday of conspiring to import cocaine into the US, and possessing “destructive devices” including machine guns.
Prosecutors said the expresident ran Honduras like a “narco-state”, protecting and accepting bribes from drug traffickers.
Hernández now faces life in prison.
The 55- year- old former president had denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in the case.
He was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court after about two days of deliberations.
Hernández was president of Honduras f rom 2014 to 2022, serving for two consecutive terms.
He initially ran as a lawand- order candidate who promised to address the issue of drug-related crime in the country.
Instead, prosecutors accused him of partnering with “some of the world’s most prolific narcotics traffickers to build a corrupt and brutally violent empire based on the illegal trafficking of tonnes of cocaine to the United States”.
Three months after leaving office, he was extradited to New York and arrested in April 2022 to face federal charges in the US.
Hernández was once seen as a strong US ally. During his leadership of Honduras, the country received more than $50m in anti-narcotics assistance from the US, as well as additional millions of dollars in security and military aid.
In 2019, then- President Donald Trump t hanked Hernández for “working with the United States very closely”.
Hernández in turn thanked Trump and the American people “for the support they have given us in the firm fight against drug trafficking”.
Prosecutors later uncovered that Hernández was linked with drug traffickers as far back as 2004, long before he became president, and that he had facilitated the smuggling of around 500 tonnes of cocaine to the US.
They said drug traffickers paid him millions of dollars in bribes to allow cocaine to be smuggled from Colombia and Venezuela through Honduras on to the US.