World Courant
NEW YORK — Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in jail in New York on Wednesday for working with venal drug traffickers for greater than a decade to make sure greater than 400 tons of cocaine reached america.
Decide P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in jail within the US and fined him $8 million, saying the sentence ought to function a warning to “well-educated, well-dressed” people who wield energy purchase and assume that their standing isolates them from righteousness after they do it flawed.
A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan federal court docket after a trial interval of two weekswhich was adopted carefully in his house nation.
“I’m harmless,” Hernández stated by an interpreter at his sentencing. “I used to be wrongly and unfairly accused.”
In a protracted, improvised assertion that was interrupted a number of occasions by the decide who repeatedly reminded him that this was not the time to restart the trial, Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking motion who cooperated with US authorities below three US presidential administrations. to cut back the import of medicines.
However the decide stated the proof from the trial proved in any other case and that Hernández used “important appearing expertise” to present the impression that he was a crusader in opposition to the drug commerce whereas, when needed, utilizing his nation’s police and army to guard the drug commerce.
Castel known as Hernández a “two-faced politician, hungry for energy” who protected a choose group of traffickers.
As the decision was handed down, the bespectacled Hernández, sporting a colorless inexperienced jail uniform, stood subsequent to his lawyer in entrance of two U.S. marshals. After shaking arms together with his lawyer and turning to nod to the packed spectator part, Hernández hobbled out of the courtroom with the assistance of a cane and a brace on one foot.
Prosecutors had requested for a life sentence plus 30 years, the identical because the court docket’s probation advice.
Hernández, 55, served two phrases as chief of the Central American nation of about 10 million folks.
He was arrested at his house in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, three months after leaving workplace in 2022. was extradited to the US in April of that yr.
U.S. prosecutors say Hernández labored with drug traffickers as early as 2004 and accepted thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes as he rose from rural congressman to president of the Nationwide Congress after which to the nation’s highest workplace.
Hernández acknowledged in a trial assertion that drug cash was paid to just about all political events in Honduras, however he denied taking bribes himself.
Hernández insisted in his prolonged assertion Wednesday that his trial was unjust as a result of he was not allowed to incorporate proof that will have led the jury to search out him not responsible. He stated he was persecuted by politicians and drug traffickers.
“It is like I have been thrown right into a deep river with my arms tied,” he stated.
Trial witnesses included human traffickers who acknowledged accountability for dozens of murders and stated Hernández was an enthusiastic protector of a few of the world’s strongest cocaine sellers, together with infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who ran a U.S. is serving a life sentence.
Throughout his remarks, the decide famous that in 2013, Guzman gave a $1 million bribe on to Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Honduran congressman who lifetime in 2021 in a US jail in New York as a consequence of his personal conviction on drug expenses.
In saying the sentence, Castel spoke at size about how Hernández had obtained a good trial and described a lot of the important thing proof offered through the trial to show his guilt.
He famous that Hernández solely helped the drug traffickers who supported his political ambitions, and never on a regular basis.
“No, he was too sensible for that,” Castel stated. The decide stated Hernández helped traffickers at any time when he might.
“His principal purpose was his personal political survival,” Castel stated.
