The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez (2014-2022) was sentenced this Wednesday to 45 years in prison and five more years of supervised release by a New York court for several crimes related to drug trafficking and the use of weapons, thereby escaping the life sentence he requested. the prosecution.
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Hernandez arrived at the courtroom where he was sentenced on Wednesday dressed in a beige shirt and holding onto a cane, a gesture that generated exclamations of surprise among the Honduran public, who watched the trial on television in one of the courtrooms.
At the beginning of his speech – which he dedicated to the United States and Honduras -, The former president accepted his fate and acknowledged that “the most likely thing is that I will be imprisoned for life,” although he reaffirmed his innocence and repeated that he has been judged “unfairly and improperly.”
The 55-year-old former Honduran president focused on defending himself against the accusations of the prosecution – which is asking for life imprisonment for him – despite Judge Kevin Castel having previously warned him that this was not an opportunity to argue his innocence.
Furthermore, he stressed before the judge that There are documents or actions that neither he nor the jury are aware of, such as several meetings he held with the United States government during his tenure as president of Honduras to fight drug trafficking.
The former Honduran president also once again assured that he did not know the drug trafficker Giovanni Fuentes, despite the fact that minutes before the judge had accused him of giving false testimony by saying during the judicial process that he did not know who Fuentes was.
Hernández also highlighted, in reference to the confiscation of 15 million dollars in assets and the payment of a 10 million fine requested by the judge, that the assets of his entire family “never exceeded 3 million dollars,” and assured that now They have nothing because the Government of Honduras “took everything from us.”
And he stressed that “if not today, the truth will come to light tomorrow, and will do a lot of damage to this country and the alliance of countries that fight against drug trafficking.”
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