Police guard former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on his way to his extradition, this Thursday in Tegucigalpa. Gustavo Amador (EFE)
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) was extradited this Thursday to the United States.
In New York City, where he is being transported from an Army base in Tegucigalpa, he will face trial for drug trafficking.
Hernández faces three charges associated with drug trafficking and use of weapons.
According to the request, US prosecutors claimed that between 2004 and 2022, even before he was president, “Hernández participated in the violent drug trafficking conspiracy to receive multi-ton shipments of cocaine.”
The 53-year-old former president was transferred, handcuffed, by helicopter to the military base from a special unit of the National Police, where he had been in preventive detention since February 15, when he was captured at his home in Tegucigalpa.
Hernández is accused by the United States of "conspiracy to import a controlled substance" into that country, with the "knowledge that said substance would be illegally imported" into United States territory, "into waters at a distance of 12 miles from the coast of the United States. Joined".
In addition, he is charged with "manufacturing, distributing, and possessing with intent to distribute a controlled substance aboard an aircraft registered in the United States."
The extradition, initially approved by a judge, was later ratified at the end of March by the 15 magistrates of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras, all of them appointed during the first Hernández government.
"I am innocent, I have been and am being subjected to an unfair process," Hernández said in a video released this Thursday by his wife, Ana García, before being extradited.
American justice was already on the heels of the former president long before he left power on January 27.
Specifically, since a year ago his brother Tony Hernández was sentenced to life imprisonment in a New York court.
The name of Juan Orlando Hernández was cited during the trial more than a hundred times by different criminals.
Since last summer, the former president was included in the list of people accused of corruption or undermining democracy and shortly after the United States withdrew his visa.
“The United States is promoting transparency and accountability in Central America by making public the visa restrictions against former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández due to corrupt acts.
No one is above the law," said the head of US diplomacy a few months ago,
Anthony Blinken.
Blinken led the way by saying that Hernández had been significantly involved "by committing or facilitating acts of corruption and drug trafficking, and by using the proceeds of illicit activities for political campaigns."
In his last interview before leaving power, the one granted to EL PAÍS on December 22, Juan Orlando Hernández defended himself by saying that he was a victim of drug traffickers whom he had fought for years.
Hernández insisted that he paid the price for having dared to approve the extradition of capos and that the United States drug enforcement agency, the DEA, had secret recordings that confirmed his belligerence against the large drug cartels.
Less than two months after that response, the United States is knocking on his door.
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