Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced this Wednesday (26) to 45 years in prison and another five years of supervised release by a New York court for several crimes related to drug trafficking and the use of weapons. .
With the confirmation of the sentence, Hernández, who governed his country between 2014 and 2022, is free from the life sentence requested by the American prosecutor’s office.
Judge Kevin Castel also imposed a fine of US$8 million and asked his lawyer to clarify within two weeks how he will pay it.
Among the Hondurans who were at the entrance to the court, around 20 with their country’s flags, there were no apparent celebrations, perhaps because they expected a greater sentence.
The judge also stated that he will decide within 120 days which prison will be where Juan Orlando Hernández, 55, will serve his sentence (he is currently in Brooklyn prison).
Castel told Hernández, before handing down the sentence, that he was “a man with two faces”: with one he shouted his commitment against drug trafficking and with the other he facilitated the importation into the United States of tons of cocaine, drugs that amounted to the value of US$ 10 million.
Furthermore, he highlighted that this sentence – if he completes it in full, the former Honduran president will be released from prison at the age of 100 – sent a message “to those who are educated and well dressed, not to believe that they will escape the charges”.
Hernández, who appeared to be aged, with gray hair and a gray beard, as well as a cane that he did not take out of his hand, heard the sentence without even hesitating, perhaps because it was closer to what his defense asked for (40 years) than the perpetuity requested by the prosecutor’s office.
The former Honduran president only asked to speak after the sentence to ask if he could keep Renato Stabile as his lawyer, to which the judge responded affirmatively at least until the appeal lasts, if presented. (With EFE Agency)
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