He risks life imprisonment. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was extradited Thursday to the United States where a New York court is seeking to try him for his participation in a massive 500-tonne trade of cocaine between 2004 and 2022.
Escorted and handcuffed, Hernandez, who was in power between 2014 and 2022, boarded a US Anti-Drug Agency plane, which took off from a Honduran army base in Tegucigalpa at 2:27 p.m. local time (2027 GMT). noted AFP journalists. † His plane would make a stop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before landing in New York, where American justice is waiting for him.
The 53-year-old ex-head of state, who ceded power to new left-wing President Xiomara Castro on January 27, was arrested less than three weeks later, on February 15, at his residence in the capital.
“Narco State”
The day before, the federal court in Manhattan had formally requested the extradition of the former right-wing president for his alleged participation in a “criminal association (which) transported more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accused him of “abusing his position as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 to run the country as a narco-state,” in a statement to the press on Thursday.
“Hernández is suspected of having received millions of dollars from various drug trafficking organizations,” the minister added in Washington. Notably, in 2013, “a one million dollar bribe from El Chapo, who was the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, in exchange for a promise to protect the drug trade from the cartels in Honduras,” Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams said. . “Because of these alleged crimes, communities in the United States have suffered and the people of Honduras have suffered,” Merrick Garland insisted.
Former ally of the United States
Juan Orlando Hernandez, who presented himself as the champion of the fight against drug trafficking, was first seen by the United States as an ally in this struggle. Washington was one of the first capitals to recognize his reelection in 2017 when the opposition denounced fraud against the backdrop of demonstrations that killed about 30 people.
The US justice system has since sentenced his brother, ex-MP “Tony” Hernandez, to life imprisonment in March 2021 for working alongside drug traffickers in this massive trade to the United States. US prosecutors believe the former president — deputy elected as of 1998 and Speaker of Parliament as of 2009 — is also involved in the importation of hundreds of tons of cocaine.
The fall came too quickly for the former head of state. On March 17, a first-instance extradition judge granted the United States’ request, upheld on March 28 by the Supreme Court of Honduras. The former head of the National Police between 2012 and 2013, Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla, who was arrested on March 9, will also soon be extradited, charged by the same court for “supervising” the operations.
