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Juan Orlando Hernandez had been charged with conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and collaborating with infamous drug traffickers such as El Chapo.
By Colin Moynihan
For more than a decade, Juan Orlando Hernández exerted force in Honduras, first as a member of Congress, then as leader of that body, and yet as the nation’s president.
On Friday, a U. S. jury in federal district court said Hernandez was found guilty of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and ownership and conspiracy to possess “destructive devices,” adding firearms.
After the verdict was announced, Hernandez, who faces a mandatory criminal sentence of at least 40 years and whose sentencing is scheduled for June 26, stood and stood silently with folded hands as jurors left the courtroom.
During his first presidential crusade in 2013, Hernández, a member of the right-wing Honduran National Party, presented himself as a law enforcement candidate capable of stopping the epidemic and crime that has engulfed the country.
But according to U. S. prosecutors, Hernandez allied himself with the very forces he claimed to oppose. A series of witnesses testified in a conspiracy trial in Manhattan that Hernandez fueled through drug proceeds funneled to him through cocaine traffickers whom he treated as business associates. .
Prosecutors said Hernandez earned millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere, adding that he earned it from Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as El Chapo, a Mexican drug trafficker and former leader of the Sinaloa cartel. In return, prosecutors said, Hernandez allowed gigantic amounts. cocaine to pass from Honduras to the United States.
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