Juan Orlando Hernandez used the drug cash to counterpoint himself and finance his political marketing campaign.

New York:

A court docket in New York on Wednesday sentenced former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez to 45 years in jail after he was convicted of trafficking tons of of tons of cocaine into the US.

Anti-Hernandez protesters gathered exterior the Manhattan courthouse forward of sentencing brandishing placards decrying the previous head of state’s crimes with one declaring “Narco authorities — makes the folks to migrate.”

“The function of Mr Hernandez was to make use of his political energy as president of Congress and president of Honduras to restrict the dangers of drug traffickers in alternate of cash,” stated Choose Kevin Castel because the disgraced statesman stood impassively.

He stated Hernandez supplied police and army assist and helped to ship 400 tons of medicine — price $10 billion at market costs — to the US.

In a speech forward of sentencing, Hernandez, who wore jail garb and used a strolling follow enter court docket, was interrupted by the decide for contesting the trial’s final result and insisting he was wrongly charged.

The sentence, which additionally included an $8 million superb, was lower than the life imprisonment that prosecutors had sought — though Hernandez’s age, 55, means he might die behind bars.

“He’ll pursue each single potential authorized treatment that he can pursue,” Hernandez’s lawyer Renato Stabile advised reporters exterior court docket.

– Battle on medicine –

Hernandez, who US federal prosecutors stated turned his Central American nation right into a “narco-state” throughout his 2014-2022 presidency, has beforehand indicated by way of his authorized crew he would attraction his conviction.

He was convicted in March of getting facilitated the smuggling of tons of of tons of cocaine — primarily from Colombia and Venezuela — to the US by way of Honduras since 2004, beginning lengthy earlier than he turned president.

Hernandez used the drug cash to counterpoint himself and finance his political marketing campaign, and commit electoral fraud within the 2013 and 2017 elections, prosecutors stated.

He had offered himself as a champion of the battle on medicine and was initially seen by Washington as an ally within the combat.

In 2017, the US was one of many first international locations to acknowledge his re-election, whereas the opposition denounced fraud in opposition to a backdrop of violent protests that left some 30 folks lifeless.

He was extradited to the US in 2022 utilizing a regulation he had himself helped to move as Congress president below strain from Washington, accused of aiding drug smugglers in return for hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes.

US Lawyer Common Merrick Garland stated Hernandez “abused his energy to assist one of many largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies on this planet, and the folks of Honduras and the US bore the results.”

The autumn of Hernandez, who is understood in his nation as “JOH,” was abrupt.

No sooner had he handed over energy to the brand new left-wing president Xiomara Castro, the outgoing chief was shackled and paraded in entrance of journalists.

Hernandez follows within the footsteps of different former Latin American heads of state convicted in the US, together with Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemala’s Alfonso Portillo in 2014.

The brief, athletic chief was identified for his army haircut, having served as an officer earlier than coaching as a lawyer, finishing a masters diploma in New York in 1995.

His authorized woes started in earnest in 2018 when his brother, Juan Antonio Hernandez, was arrested in Miami and sentenced in March 2021 to life imprisonment for “large-scale” drug trafficking.

After his arrest in Honduras in February 2022, Hernandez stated he was a sufferer of “revenge” by the drug lords, lots of whom testified in opposition to him in New York.

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