26th June, 2024
Juan Orlando Hernandez, former President of Honduras has been jailed for 45 years in the United States for drug trafficking offences.
He was also fined by the U.S. Judge $8 million for the offences.
The sentence means Hernandez, 55, will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, unless his expected appeal succeeds, reports Reuters.
A Manhattan jury had found him guilty in March of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect U.S.-bound cocaine shipments belonging to traffickers he once publicly proclaimed to combat, says the agency.
Prosecutors had accused Hernández of conspiring with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than 400 tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States.
He was extradited from Honduras after the US Department of Justice filed three drug-trafficking and firearms related charges against him in 2022.
U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel said the 45-year sentence should send a message to well-educated, seemingly personable defendants who might believe they are insulated from prosecution.
According to CNN, Hernandez had previously denied the charges against him and at his sentencing on Wednesday insisted that he is innocent and was “wrongly and unjustly accused.”
“Despite everything done to me, which is an outrage and a lynching, I am an optimist and I know that the truth will be known later,” Hernandez told Castel through a Spanish interpreter prior to being sentenced.
Hernandez has been jailed in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his April 2022 extradition from Tegucigalpa.
Reuters quoted Castel as saying that he would let Hernandez stay there for now while he appeals.
Hernandez’s younger brother, Tony Hernandez, was sentenced to life in prison in March 2021 following his conviction on drug charges. He has been imprisoned in California.