In the fight against drugs, American justice has been dealing with a former president since Tuesday. The exceptional trial of former Honduran head of state Juan Orlando Hernandez for alleged drug trafficking to the United States has opened in New York.
Known by the acronym “JOH” in his country, he appeared at the hearing in a suit and tie, flanked by his lawyers, and visibly nervous. The defendant, 55, has not yet decided whether he will testify on the stand. The trial, postponed several times since the ex-president’s extradition (2014-2022) to the United States in April 2022, is scheduled to last two to three weeks in Manhattan federal court.
«JOH» is called «innocent»
The former head of state, who says he is “innocent”, was extradited at the end of his presidency, after being accused of having facilitated the smuggling of 500 tonnes of cocaine between 2004 and 2022. In exchange, according to the American prosecutors, he allegedly received millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels, notably from the famous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, sentenced to life imprisonment by American justice in 2019 and now incarcerated in a prison high security.
Juan Orlando Hernandez appears detained and alone in court since his two co-defendants, former Honduran police chief Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla and a former police officer, Mauricio Hernandez, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in order to cooperate with justice American and escape the trial.
If he is found guilty of the three charges brought against him (criminal conspiracy for drug trafficking and two others for trafficking and possession of weapons), the former president could be sentenced to life in prison, like his brother Tony Hernandez and the latter’s collaborator, Geovanny Fuentes, involved in the same network.
Former Latin American leaders in prison
Juan Orlando Hernandez has repeatedly claimed that he was the victim of “revenge by the cartels, a plot orchestrated so that no government will ever resist them again”. A thesis that he again supported in a text posted Monday by his wife, Ana Garcia, on the basis of testimonies from declared drug traffickers” who want to obtain clemency from the American justice system.
A conviction would make him join other former Latin American leaders tried and convicted in the United States, such as Panamanian Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemalan Alfonso Portillo in 2014. In 2023, the former Mexican “tsar” of the struggle anti-drug minister, former minister Genaro Garcia Luna, was found guilty in New York of drug trafficking. His prison sentence will be pronounced on June 24.
2024-02-21 03:30:00
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