By EFE
Jun 25, 2024, 11:55 AM EDT
The former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandezwill learn his sentence this Wednesday, after having been found guilty by a jury of three charges of drug trafficking and weapons, for which he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
The former president, a lawyer by training before becoming a deputy and then president of the national Congress, has maintained his claim of innocence and, in a letter sent to the judge on Friday, he reiterated that his trial was “riddled with errors” and “injustices,” until it became a “lynching” carried out by the US justice system.
“The prosecutors and agents did not do due diligence in the investigation to know the whole truth,” he stated in the letter to the judge. Kevin Castel, who also sentenced his brother Juan Antonio Hernández in March 2021now serving a life sentence also for drug trafficking.
In January 2022, the US Department of Justice charged Hernández, who had just finished his term as president, with conspiracy to import cocaine, a charge that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum sentence of life in prison. in addition to other crimes related to the carrying and use of weapons, punishable by between 30 years and life.
Hernández was arrested at his home in Honduras in February 2022, handcuffed and handcuffed, and extradited to the United States in April.
He turned Honduras into a narco-state
The United States claims that Hernández, 55, used his power as president to turn Honduras into a narco-state that facilitated the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States.
In the trial, which lasted just over two weeks, the Prosecutor’s Office was unable to provide evidence – emails, calls or other incriminating messages – beyond the testimonies of the same Honduran drug traffickers deported under their Government, who testified after negotiating prison benefits.
The star witnesses, who are serving sentences in prisons in this country, – and who spoke as part of a prior agreement to obtain a reduction in their sentence – assured that the former president accepted drug money to come to power, including a million dollars from Sinaloa Cartel directed by the famous drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
They also said that he used state resources to protect cocaine shipments that passed through Honduras from South America, destined for Mexico and from there to the United States.
As part of the pre-sentence process, his lawyer Renato Stabile also sent a lengthy letter to the judge asking him to consider a maximum sentence of 40 years for his client, reaffirm his innocence and ensure that will continue fighting for a “fair” trial.
Among the people who have sent letters to the judge is also his wife, also a lawyer, Ana Garciawho frequently uses social media to advocate for Hernández, with whom he has three children.
“What they did against my husband is not fair, he was treated like a prisoner of war isolated in a cell for terrorists under the process you direct. “You yourself issued orders that you yourself later ignored (…),” García indicated.
“It was a process where injustice prevailed that ended up condemning an innocent man. And that, Mr. Castel, God saw, his thoughts and his manipulations. He knows them,” he argued in his attack on the magistrate.
Keep reading:
– Defense of the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández asks to reduce his sentence.
– Juan Orlando Hernández and other high-profile officials who have been convicted in the US for drug trafficking.