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NEW YORK — A defiant former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in New York Wednesday to 45 years in jail for teaming up with some bribe-paying drug traffickers for over a decade to make sure over 400 tons of cocaine made it to the US.
Decide P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a U.S. jail and fined him $8 million, saying that the penalty ought to function a warning to “properly educated, properly dressed” people who acquire energy and assume their standing insulates them from justice once they do fallacious.
A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan federal courtroom after a two-week trial, which was carefully adopted in his dwelling nation.
“I’m harmless,” Hernández stated by an interpreter at his sentencing. “I used to be wrongly and unjustly accused.”
In a prolonged extemporaneous assertion interrupted a number of occasions by the choose who repeatedly reminded him that this was not a time to relitigate the trial, Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking motion who teamed up with American authorities below three U.S. presidential administrations to cut back drug imports.
However the choose stated trial proof proved the other and that Hernández employed “appreciable appearing expertise” to make it appear that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader whereas he deployed his nation’s police and navy, when mandatory, to guard the drug commerce.
Castel known as Hernández a “two-faced politician hungry for energy” who protected a choose group of traffickers.
Because the sentence was introduced, the bespectacled Hernández in a uninteresting inexperienced jail uniform stood subsequent to his lawyer in entrance of two U.S. marshals. After shaking fingers together with his lawyer and turning to nod towards the packed spectator part, Hernández hobbled out of courtroom with the assistance of a cane and a brace on one foot.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of life in jail, plus 30 years, the identical as the advice from the courtroom’s probation officers.
Hernández, 55, served two phrases because the chief of the Central American nation of roughly 10 million folks.
He was arrested at his dwelling in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, three months after leaving workplace in 2022 and was extradited to the U.S. in April of that yr.
U.S. prosecutors say Hernández labored with drug traffickers as way back as 2004, taking thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes as he rose from rural congressman to president of the Nationwide Congress after which to the nation’s highest workplace.
Hernández acknowledged in trial testimony that drug cash was paid to nearly all political events in Honduras, however he denied accepting bribes himself.
Hernández insisted in his prolonged assertion Wednesday that his trial was unjust as a result of he was not allowed to incorporate proof that may have brought on the jury to search out him not responsible. He stated he was being persecuted by politicians and drug traffickers.
“It’s as if I had been thrown right into a deep river with my fingers sure,” he stated.
Trial witnesses included traffickers who admitted duty for dozens of murders and stated Hernández was an enthusiastic protector of among the world’s strongest cocaine sellers, together with infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who’s serving a life jail time period within the U.S.
Throughout his remarks, the choose famous that Guzman had given a $1 million bribe in 2013 on to Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Honduran congressman who was sentenced to life in a U.S. jail in 2021 in New York for his personal conviction on drug fees.
As he introduced the sentence, Castel spoke at size concerning the methods Hernández had obtained a good trial and described a lot of the important thing proof that emerged at trial to show guilt.
He famous that Hernández solely helped the drug traffickers who aided his political ambitions and never on a regular basis.
“No, he was too sensible for that,” Castel stated. The choose stated Hernández aided traffickers each time he might.
“His No. 1 purpose was his personal political survival,” Castel stated.