By: Insight Crime
July 2, 2024
A US court has sentenced former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison, marking the end of a spectacular legal process that may do little to change the drug trafficking flows from the Central American nation.
For Hernández, who is 55, it will likely mean he spends the rest of his life behind bars.
The sentencing follows Hernandez’s March 8 conviction after a jury in New York found him guilty of participating in a conspiracy to import hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States and using weapons to further drug trafficking offenses. The judge also said that Hernández had lied about his relationships with known drug traffickers while under oath.
This article is part of a special series detailing the rise and fall of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted on drug charges in the United States. Read the other articles in the series here.
Hernández said that his conviction amounted to a “lynching,” according to Inner City Press, which was in the courtroom at the time.
Hernández is the third president to be convicted of drug trafficking in the United States. He joins the company of Manuel Noriega, Panama’s brutal dictator, who was convicted in 1992 of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. Andrew Fahie, the former premier of the British Virgin Islands, was also convicted on drug trafficking charges in February this year.
Hernández’ brother, former Honduran senator Tony Hernández, is serving a life sentence in the United States on drug trafficking charges.
In a sentencing submission, the US government demanded “the most serious sanction available” against Hernández and described him as one of the “most culpable [defendants] ever prosecuted in the United States.”
“The damage [Hernández] caused to his country – his betrayal of Honduras – defies description,” the submission stated. “He sold [the Honduran people] out to drug traffickers for his own advancement and gain.”
The language juxtaposed with the attitude multiple US administrations took towards Hernández while he was in office. The US government gifted tens of millions of dollars in military and police aid to Honduras, and long regarded Hernández as a staunch pro-US ally in the so-called war on drugs.
The US government recognized the 2017 re-election of Hernández for an unconstitutional second term in polls marked by serious irregularities and credible accusations of fraud. At the time, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials had been aware of Hernández’s participation in drug trafficking for at least four years.
During the trial, which relied primarily on testimony from former drug traffickers, prosecutors argued that Hernández actively worked with some of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet to move hundreds of tons of cocaine through Honduras and extracted millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers, effectively turning Honduras into a “narco-state.”
State institutions, including the military and police, were subverted to carry out orders from criminal groups, the court heard, and threats to Hernández’ power were systematically eliminated, including the murder of several potential witnesses.
“This is not a happy day for the DEA nor Honduras,” said Mike Vigil, the former chief of the DEA’s international operations. “But it is a historical day that sends a very strong message to the political elite of Honduras that sooner or later, justice will be served.”
InSight Crime Analysis
The conviction of Hernández offers Hondurans a tantalizing glimpse of power being held to account, but will have little impact on drug trafficking in the region.
In their sentencing document, prosecutors optimistically suggested that a tough sentence for Hernández would “resonate with drug traffickers and corrupt officials around the world” and would deter other powerful people from engaging in criminal conduct.
But the conviction of kingpins doesn’t seem to have deterred traffickers in the past in Honduras, and there’s no reason to suggest that this time will be any different.
A former US official, who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity, dismissed the idea that the conviction would have a chilling effect and pointed to the experience of the Rosenthals, another powerful Honduran family with links to politics and drug trafficking.
Yani Rosenthal, for example, pleaded guilty to laundering drug trafficking proceeds in a US trial in 2017 but returned to Honduras in 2020, where he launched an ultimately unsuccessful bid to become the country’s president. He is now a congressman.
“Nobody flinched,” the official said. “This isn’t a case of some bad actors coming in and corrupting the system. This is the system.”
Experts consulted by InSight Crime pointed to the approval of extradition in 2012 as being more impactful in driving change in drug trafficking groups in Honduras, a policy ironically championed by Hernández before he himself was extradited.
While Hernández was in office, the government used extradition to dismantle several of Honduras’ larger drug trafficking groups, including the Valles and the Cachiros, and sent the leaders to face trial in the United States. But rather than impede drug flows, the vacuum created seems to have been filled by a hydra of smaller clans, while the remnants of old groups remain.
A Honduran official, who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press, told InSight Crime that while organized criminal groups in the country had become more fragmented, the modus operandi of organized criminal groups largely remained the same.
“Criminal structures [in Honduras] used to have a vertical command structure,” the official said. “Extradition led to the mutation of these groups. Today, they operate in a network of crime cells, they are corporate partners, [which] reduces the probability of being prosecuted.”
Óscar Estrada, author of a book outlining the history of drug trafficking in Honduras, told InSight Crime that the fight against drug trafficking was becoming more complex.
“It’s not possible for [the government] to take down big actors like the Valles and the Cachiros because the actors in the drug trafficking world today are small actors,” he said.
While the organized criminal groups involved in drug trafficking in Honduras are smaller than before, almost 7 tons of cocaine was seized in Honduras in the first four months of 2024 alone, according to data from the Ministry of Defense (Secretaría de Defensa Nacional – SEDENA) and obtained by InSight Crime, indicating that large quantities of drugs continue to move through the region.
Meanwhile, Honduran authorities have continued to pursue Hernández’s old network. On June 21, security forces captured Mario Cálix in Catacamas, a city in the eastern department of Olancho. Cálix is believed to have served as a key enabler of the former president’s activities and even conspired in murders ordered by Hernández’s brother, Tony.
“A lot of the individuals linked to Juan Orlando and a lot of the [drug trafficking] infrastructure created still exist,” Vigil told InSight Crime. “Drug trafficking is still prominent in Honduras. Changing that will require a Herculean effort.”