Former Honduras prez pleads not guilty to U.S. drug charges
The former president of Honduras wants to call former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama as well as convicted Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman as defense witnesses against U.S. drug charges.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was a head of state from 2014 until January, appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday to plead not guilty to engaging in an 18-year drug trafficking conspiracy. After the arraignment, Hernandez’s lawyer Raymond Colon spoke to reporters outside the courthouse and proclaimed his client’s innocence.
Colon said Guzman, the former head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel who is now serving a life sentence in the U.S., could be called to testify that he never met or dealt with Hernandez. Trump and Obama would say that Hernandez was a strong ally in the fight against drug trafficking, the lawyer suggested.
“They acknowledged his activities and my client was the first president to enforce or agree to the extradition of individuals in Honduras that were trafficking narcotics,” Colon said. “We need to bring that out and maybe that’s our way out of a life sentence.”
Hernandez, 53, was extradited to New York last month to face charges that he helped facilitate the smuggling of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. According to U.S. prosecutors, Hernandez received millions of dollars to use his office and his nation’s law enforcement and military to support drug traffickers in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere.
The former president appeared for his arraignment dressed in black prison fatigues and guarded by federal marshals. He placed his right hand over his heart in a sign of recognition of supporters as he entered the courtroom.
“Not guilty,” Hernandez said to the court in Spanish.
Colon told U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel at Tuesday’s hearing that Hernandez was being treated “like a prisoner of war” at the federal jail in Brooklyn, New York, where he’s in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. During his one hour a day outside alone on the jail’s basketball court, Hernandez was denied either a basketball or soccer ball, the lawyer said.