By: Staff Writer
March 8, 2024
FORMER Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez is currently on trial in New York on drug trafficking charges and faces life in prison, he alleges it to be a conspiracy against him.
A New York jury began deliberations on Thursday of Hernandez on charges of drug trafficking, including the transfer of hundreds of tons of cocaine through his country to the United States.
The former two-term president of Honduras denied in court on Tuesday that he had trafficked narcotics, offered police protection to drug cartels or taken bribes — assertions that have been at the heart of a conspiracy trial taking place in Manhattan.
Government witnesses have included a string of former traffickers from Honduras who testified that they bribed Mr. Hernández in return for promises that he would insulate them from investigations and protect them from extradition to the United States.
Dressed in a dark suit with a blue shirt and tie, Mr. Hernández sat up straight during his testimony and sometimes gave long, discursive answers that prompted the judge overseeing the trial to rein him in.
If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Hernandez, whose 2014 to 2022 stint as president was plagued by allegations of corruption, is accused of having facilitated the smuggling of some 500 tons of cocaine — mainly from Colombia and Venezuela — to the United States via Honduras since 2004, starting long before his presidency.
US prosecutors say Hernandez turned Honduras into a “narco-state” by involving the military, police and civilians in drug trafficking.
Hernandez used the drug money to enrich himself and finance his political campaign, and commit electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections, prosecutors allege.
As president, Hernandez worked closely with the administration of former US president Donald Trump, winning Washington’s praise for his government’s work in drug seizures and the fight against organized crime.
Throughout the trial, rows of benches in the courtroom have been filled with Hondurans attending to watch Mr. Hernández face a judicial process of the sort some doubted could have taken place in Honduras. Those who could not find a seat in the courtroom have instead watched the proceedings on a tall screen in an overflow room on a different floor of the courthouse.
During Mr. Hernández’s direct testimony on Tuesday, some in the courtroom gallery were rapt. At times others laughed derisively, and on one occasion a statement by Mr. Hernández was met with a long hiss.