The trial of the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández began this Tuesday (02/20/2024) in New York with the selection of the jury, which will determine whether he is guilty or innocent of conspiring to introduce tons of cocaine into the United States for almost two decades.
Judge Kevin Castel, after a thorough process to determine his suitability, announced at the end of the afternoon the constitution of the jury of 12 members and 6 alternates. They are anonymous people to the public, chosen by lottery who respond to a number and who will have to determine beyond a reasonable doubt the fate of the former president who governed Honduras from 2012 to 2022.
JOH, the acronym by which he is known in Honduras where he also presided over Congress (2010-2014), is accused of participating in and protecting a network that sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States between 2004 and 2022.
In exchange, according to the New York Prosecutor’s Office, he received “millions of dollars” from the drug cartels, among them from the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.
Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, brother of Juan Orlando Hernández, and his collaborator, Geovanny Fuentes, are also serving life sentences for drug trafficking in United States prisons.
The jury will hear on Wednesday, February 21, starting at 10:30 local time, the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office to accuse him and the defense to exonerate him in a room at the Federal Court in Southern Manhattan that over two or three weeks will see the parade of witnesses.
Although he is not required to do so, it is not yet decided whether Hernández will take the stand to testify.
The former president, initially somewhat nervous, so much so that lawyer Raymond Colon asked him to calm down, was in the audience all day. He has been detained in a Brooklyn jail since his extradition in April 2022 shortly after handing over the presidency to leftist Xiomara Castro.
For the occasion, he wore the suit he wore the day he assumed his second term in Honduras in 2018, according to his wife Ana García in Tegucigalpa. Without a visa, no one from his closest family will be able to accompany him during the trial.
“I am innocent, I am a victim of revenge”
In a letter published the day before, the former president reiterated that “I am innocent, I am the victim of revenge and a conspiracy by organized crime and political enemies,” said the former ruler in the letter published on the X network by his wife.
These are, he maintains, accusations that are “unfair” and “full of lies” made by “confessed drug traffickers” who negotiated with the New York Prosecutor’s Office to achieve “the reduction of their sentences.”
Other defendants, former police chief Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla and former police officer Mauricio Hernández, who were to be tried with the former president, pleaded guilty only to drug trafficking, which could constitute a sentence of between 10 and 40 years in prison. prison.
That decision could be harmful to JOH, which has always boasted of Washington’s praise for its government’s work in the fight against drug trafficking.
One of the witnesses planned by the Prosecutor’s Office is Fabio Lobo, son of former president Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014), who pleaded guilty and is serving 24 years in prison in the United States.
Since 2014, Honduras has extradited 38 people accused of drug trafficking to the United States.
Hernández alleges that during his administration laws against drug trafficking were approved, such as the one that facilitated his own extradition.
It is unusual to see a former president being tried in an American court. Before him, the Panamanian Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1992, and the Guatemalan Alfonso Portillo, in 2014, were convicted by the US justice system.
In 2023, former Mexican Homeland Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, the highest-ranking Mexican official to ever sit on the bench in the United States, was found guilty of drug trafficking, among other charges. His sentencing is scheduled to be announced on June 24, 2024, after being delayed on several occasions.
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