From the president of Honduras to the dock in New York, accused of drug trafficking

After numerous postponements, the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez His trial began Tuesday in New York, accused of helping smuggle tons of cocaine into the United States for almost two decades.

The trial, which will last two to three weeks according to judge Kevin Castel, began with the selection of the 12 jury members and 6 alternates out of a total of 40 pre-selected, half of whom expressed problems being present continuously. process, AFP noted.

The former president, known as JOH in Honduras, appeared at the hearing flanked by his lawyers and dressed in a suit and tie. At first he seemed nervous and constantly rubbed his hands. Lawyer Raymond Colon asked him to calm down.

Hernandez has yet to decide whether to take the witness stand.

Extradited to New York in April 2022the 55-year-old former president 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, received “millions of dollars” from drug cartels, among them the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life in prison in the United States, according to the New York prosecutor’s office.

If found guilty of the three charges brought against him by the prosecution – drug trafficking, trafficking and weapons possession – he could be sentenced to life in prisonlike his brother Tony Hernández and his collaborator Geovanny Fuentes, who participated in the same network.

On Tuesday, a group of around twenty Hondurans demonstrated outside the court to demand three life sentences on each of the charges. “Here’s your drug-dealing president”they sang.

Your defense

In a letter published on Monday, the former president (2014-2022) reiterated that he is “innocent” and “a victim of revenge”.

“I am innocent, I am the victim of revenge and a conspiracy of organized crime and political enemies,” the former president said in the letter published on the X network by his wife Ana García.

In the message addressed to the Honduran people, which will have little impact on the trial in the Southern Federal Court in Manhattan, Hernández called the accusations “unjust” and “full of lies fabricated in a fictitious manner based on the testimonies” of “confessed drug traffickers”, who negotiated with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to obtain “a reduction in 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, They pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.

This decision, which could mean a reduction in sentence, could be harmful to JOH, which always he boasted of Washington’s praise for his government’s work in the fight against drug trafficking.

According to the former president’s lawyers, Bonilla testified against him.

In his defense, Hernández claims that anti-drug trafficking laws were passed during his administration, like the one who facilitated his own extradition.

On Friday evening, Judge Castel once again rejected the defense’s request to postpone the trial again for between 90 and 180 days, citing a lack of time to review the thousands of pages presented by the prosecution.

Of them, 2,200 from January 13th onwards they are marked as sensitive and can be examined by the accused only in the presence of a specialized lawyer.

It is unusual to see a former president tried in an American court. Before him they had been convicted by the American justice system the Panamanian Antonio Manuel Noriega, in 1992, and the Guatemalan Alfonso Portillo, in 2014.

Last year, former Mexican Homeland Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, the highest-ranking Mexican official to sit on a bench in the United States, he was convicted of drug trafficking, among other accusations. His sentence is expected to be announced on June 24, after being postponed on several occasions.

Since 2014, Honduras has extradited 38 people accused of drug trafficking to the United States, where they have already been convicted, in addition to Tony Hernández and Geovanny Fuentes, Fabio Lobo, son of former president Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014), to 24 years in prison, and former MP Fredy Renán Nájera, to 30 years.