A popular jury found him guilty on 8 March of three counts of drug and arms trafficking, which may lead to a life sentence, such as other defendants in the same case, including his brother Tony Hernández or his close collaborator Geovanny Fuentes.
Three and a half months after being found guilty of drug and arms trafficking, the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, is expected to know his conviction on Wednesday.
A popular jury found him guilty on 8 March of three counts of drug and arms trafficking, which may lead to a life sentence, such as other defendants in the same case, including his brother Tony Hernández or his close collaborator Geovanny Fuentes.
At a hearing scheduled for Wednesday at 11h00 (15H00 GMT), Judge Kevin Castel is set to announce the sentence.
In an attempt to avoid a life sentence, the defense lawyer, Renato Stabile, argues in the sentencing arguments sent to the judge on Friday, 21 June, that the minimum sentence provided for by law – 10 years for the charge of drug trafficking and 30 years for the charge of arms – will satisfy the objectives of the sentence – and asks that the judge not impose an additional penalty.
However, that minimum sentence would practically leave the 55-year-old former president for the rest of his life behind bars in a maximum security prison in the United States.
Stabile reminds the judge that his defendant has always claimed his “innocence,” on the grounds that he was convicted – wrongly – on the basis of the “word of drug traffickers and Honduran killers – the same ones he fought – who seek revenge and get out of jail.”
His defendant will be convicted by all legal means, he says. He’ll never give up.
In the same case, former Honduran police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as El Tigre, and policeman Mauricio Hernández Pineda, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, are co-defendant, avoiding sitting on the bench of justice with the former president.
I’m innocent.
I am innocent, not guilty, soothing, Hernández in another 159-page document sent to Judge Castel last week in which he unveils the laws he promoted and his collaboration with the U.S. government to end organized crime and gang violence that claimed the lives of nearly 88,000 people, making Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
I was charged and wrongfully and incorrectly convicted, says the man who from 2014 to 2022, for two consecutive terms, led the destinies of Honduras.
The investigation and trial against him is – full of mistakes and injustices, he regrets. The prosecution and the officers did not act with due diligence on the investigation to know the whole truth.
In the letter, he accuses both the authorities who preceded him and the agents of the U.S. drug department, DEA, of not doing what they should have done – to deal with organized crime violence.
He also recalls that his government – he collaborated and coordinated the fight against drug trafficking with – different institutions and agencies of the U.S. government – and was received in the White House by the current presidents.
Republican Donald Trump’s government faithful collaborator (2017-2021) boasted Washington’s praise for his government’s work in the fight against drug trafficking.
But the New York prosecutor’s office accused him of creating an “narco-state,” and of turning Honduras into a super highway, through which much of the drug from Colombia passed.
– Money from Chapo
Between 2004 and 2022 – from his positions as a deputy, president of Congress and then president of the Republic – Hernández participated and protected a network that sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States, according to the indictment.
In return, he reportedly received millions of dollars from the drug cartels, including Mexican drug dealer Joaquín Chapo-Guzmán, sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
Extradited in April 2022 to the United States, three months after handing over the presidency to his successor, the leftist Xiomara Castro, Hernández would have been the author of the famous phrase: we will put the drug on the gringos in their noses and they will not even notice, according to a witness in a trial.
Since 2014, half a hundred Hondurans accused of drug trafficking have been extradited or voluntarily surrendered to U.S. justice.
This article has been translated after first appearing in El Salvador