A federal judge in New York will issue this Tuesday the sentence for drug trafficking against Juan Antonio
Tony
Hernández, brother of the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, in a case in which the United States Government has linked the Honduran president with cocaine trafficking and he has described the Central American country as a "narco-state."
The Prosecutor's Office asked Judge Kevin Castel, who is presiding over the case, to sentence Tony Hernández, 42, to
life imprisonment for "drug trafficking supported by the State"
, as well as the restitution of 138 million dollars of "colored money of blood "obtained through his criminal organization for drug trafficking and the payment of a fine of another 10 million dollars.
[The DEA investigated the president of Honduras for drug trafficking]
Tony Hernández's defense asked the magistrate to hand down the lowest possible sentence, 40 years in prison, and in a letter addressed to Castel he has politicized the process and has accused the US Administration wanting to force a change of government in Honduras.
"This case is one more in a long line of foreign policy intervention misfortunes carried out by the United States government, this time in search of regime change at the highest levels in Honduras," Hernández's lawyer said. , Peter Brill, in a letter addressed to the judge.
Guilty of drug trafficking, this was the verdict against Tony Hernández, brother of the president of Honduras
Oct. 18, 201901: 29
Tony Hernández was a deputy in the Honduran Congress between 2014 and 2018 and was arrested on November 23, 2018 at the Miami airport on charges of trafficking cocaine to the United States, possession of weapons and lying to the United States authorities.
Prosecutors accuse President Hernández's brother of
operating a transportation network of "at least 185,000 kilograms of cocaine" for 15 years
and corrupting Honduran institutions along the way.
"The defendant carried out an impressive level of drug distribution, commanded heavily armed members of the Police and Armed Forces," includes the prosecutor's request delivered to the robed two weeks ago, which also accuses him of selling weapons to drug traffickers. bribery and operation of drug laboratories in Colombia and Honduras.
The trial began on October 2, 2019 in the Federal Court of the South of New York and on October 18 of the same year, he was found guilty of all the charges by the members of the jury who, during the process, heard the testimonies of several drug traffickers such as Victor Hugo Díaz Morales, alias El Rojo, and Alexander Ardón, mayor of the municipality of El Paraiso in the Honduran region of Copán.
[Video of the murder of the man who linked the brother of the president of Honduras to drug trafficking is revealed]
The witnesses claimed to have paid bribes to Tony and Juan Orlando Hernández, and one of them, worth a million dollars, would have been delivered in 2013 by the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, the Mexican Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán.
In the last letter sent to the judge, the Prosecutor's Office, which also implicated former presidents José Manuel Zelaya and Porfirio Lobo, detailed in 65 pages how the Honduran president's brother operated with impunity, was linked to murders and led a life of luxury.
Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, a former leader of the Los Cachiros cartel, testified this month in another trial that his drug cartel paid a $ 250,000 bribe in 2012 to Juan Orlando Hernández, when he was president of Congress.
The payment was allegedly made to Hilda Hernández, a sister of the president who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2017.
The president of Honduras has reacted on several occasions during this and another process in New York against the Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez in which he has also been accused of drug trafficking, denying the accusations of the Prosecutor's Office.
For Juan Orlando Hernández, the claims that he had used drug money in his 2013 campaign are
"false and perverse
.
"
[A new caravan gets ready in Honduras to leave for the United States]
After the verdict against Fuentes Ramírez was known, on March 22, Hernández reacted with a tweet in English and Spanish criticizing the process and calling it a means of writing "dramatic headlines. to promote the false testimony of the drug traffickers we defeated. "
"Any narrative about the battle against drug trafficking in Honduras that omits the unprecedented reduction of 95% (official US data) that we achieved is generally just a vehicle for dramatic headlines to promote the false testimony of the narcos we defeated," he wrote the president of Honduras.
Why haven't they brought charges against the president?
US prosecutors rarely press charges against sitting foreign presidents, according to Eric Olson, director of policy for the Seattle International Foundation, an organization that promotes good governance and equity in Central America.
"There are some exceptions, of course, but it is a general rule," Olson said during an interview with the AP news agency.
On these issues, the Department of Justice normally does what the State Department wants, according to the expert.
However, Olson said, Hernández is nearing the end of his second term, which ends in January 2022 and the "evidence against him continues to accumulate."
Prosecutors may be filing charges before January, but again, "it's not the traditional way" of doing things, according to Olson.
With information from AP and EFE.
