(New York) The exceptional trial of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez for alleged drug trafficking to the United States, including smuggling 500 tons of cocaine over nearly two decades, opened Tuesday in New York .
Known by the acronym “JOH” in his country, the former head of state appeared at the hearing in a suit and tie, flanked by his lawyers, and visibly nervous. The defendant, 55, has not yet decided whether he will testify on the stand.
The trial, postponed several times since the ex-president’s extradition (2014-2022) to the United States in April 2022, and which is scheduled to last two to three weeks in Manhattan federal court, formally began with the selection of the jury.
The former Honduran head of state, who calls himself “innocent”, was extradited almost two years ago – a highly publicized sequence at the time – at the end of his presidency, after being accused of having facilitated the smuggling of 500 tonnes of cocaine between 2004 and 2022.
In exchange, according to American prosecutors, he would have received millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels, notably from the famous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, sentenced to life imprisonment by American justice in 2019 and now incarcerated in a high security prison.
Mr. Hernandez appears detained and alone in court since his two co-defendants, former Honduran police chief Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla and a former police officer, Mauricio Hernandez, have pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in order to cooperate with American justice and escape trial.
“Narco-president”
If he is found guilty of the three charges against him (criminal conspiracy for drug trafficking and two others for trafficking and possession of weapons), Mr. Hernandez could be sentenced to life in prison, as his brother Tony Hernandez and the latter’s collaborator, Geovanny Fuentes, involved in the same network.
In front of the courthouse in New York, a group of around twenty Hondurans demonstrated to demand that the former head of state end his days behind bars. “Here is your narcopresident,” they chanted.
PHOTO KENA BETANCUR, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A protester holds up a sign outside the courthouse demanding the extradition of all Honduran actors involved in drug trafficking.
Juan Orlando Hernandez has repeatedly claimed that he was the victim of “revenge by the cartels, a plot orchestrated so that no government will ever resist them again”.
A thesis that he again supported in a text posted Monday by his wife, Ana Garcia, on the basis of testimonies from declared drug traffickers” who want to obtain clemency from the American justice system.
As president, he worked closely with former US President Donald Trump’s administration, earning praise from Washington for drug busts and the fight against organized crime.
For US federal prosecutors, “JOH” had in fact become a drug trafficker and had transformed his small Central American country into a “narco-state” with the help of military, police and civilians.
His indictment in New York also accuses him of having enriched himself with drug money, of having financed his electoral campaigns and of having engaged in fraud during the 2013 and 2017 elections.
A conviction would make him join other former Latin American leaders tried and convicted in the United States, such as Panamanian Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemalan Alfonso Portillo in 2014.
In 2023, the former Mexican “tsar” of the fight against drugs, ex-minister Genaro Garcia Luna, was found guilty in New York of drug trafficking. His prison sentence will be pronounced on June 24.
reference: www.lapresse.ca