This Friday, the Southern District Court of New York, in the United States, found the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) guilty of three counts of drug trafficking. The former president was arrested just a few weeks after leaving office.
The jury has unanimously decided that the former Honduran president is guilty of the crime of conspiring to “import a controlled substance into the United States,” as well as using and carrying firearms, and “conspiring to use” these weapons, “including machine guns and destructive devices”.
Hernández is now waiting for Judge Kevin Castel to hand down his sentence, according to the Honduran press, which recalls that the former president’s brother, Antonio Hernández, was already sentenced by a federal court in New York to life imprisonment and to pay 138 millions of dollars.
On February 15, 2022, just two weeks after leaving the Presidency, Hernández was arrested in a high-profile operation in his arrest, from which he emerged dressed in a bulletproof vest and chained hand and foot. A month later, his extradition to the United States was approved.
Hernández is accused of having been related to, among others, the Mexican drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guszmán, and the drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, who would have financed his 2014 presidential campaign in exchange for protection to avoid a possible extradition.
