Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for colluding with drug traffickers to ensure over 400 tons of cocaine reached American soil.
A defiant former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in New York Wednesday to 45 years in prison for teaming up with some bribe-paying drug traffickers for over a decade to ensure over 400 tons of cocaine made it to the United States.
Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a U.S. prison and fined him $8 million, saying that the penalty should serve as a warning to «well educated, well dressed» individuals who gain power and think their status insulates them from justice when they do wrong.
A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in his home country.
«I am innocent», Hernández said through an interpreter at his sentencing. «I was wrongly and unjustly accused.»
In a lengthy extemporaneous statement interrupted several times by the judge 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 movement who teamed up with American authorities under three U.S. presidential administrations to reduce drug imports.
But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernández employed «considerable acting skills» to make it seem that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader while he deployed his nation’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade.
Castel called Hernández a «two-faced politician hungry for power» who protected a select group of traffickers.
As the sentence was announced, the bespectacled Hernández in a dull green prison uniform stood next to his lawyer in front of two U.S. marshals. After shaking hands with his lawyer and turning to nod toward the packed spectator section, Hernández hobbled out of court with the help of a cane and a brace on one foot.
