The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) has been declared this Friday guilty on three counts of drug and weapons trafficking by a New York juryafter a trial that lasted just over two weeks.

Hernández, who is now waiting for Judge Kevin Castel to hand down his sentence, will thus become the highest-ranking Latin American leader convicted of drug trafficking after the case of Panamanian Manuel Antonio Noriega, sentenced in 1992 in a Florida court to 40 years in prison. for his connections with the Colombian Medellín cartel.

Hernández stoically listened to the sentence, without any gesture, but when he got up from his chair and left the room, he turned to the public, looked at his two sisters-in-law – his wife did not travel because the US had denied him a visa – and told them: “I’m innocent. I love them very muchTell the world.” Fifty Hondurans who were outside the court immediately began to celebrate the verdict, which could cost Hernández several life sentences.

The charge of “conspiring to import cocaine” carries a sentence of between 10 years and life; “using and carrying machine guns and other destructive devices” to introduce drugs is punishable between 30 years and life; and that of ““conspire to use and carry machine guns” For the importation of drugs it also has a maximum penalty of life.

The jury, convinced of its relationship with drug trafficking

Judge Kevin Castel has thus retained the three charges brought against him by the Prosecutor’s Office on behalf of the United States Government, which has repeatedly said that Hernández “participated in a corrupt and violent drug trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States.”

The Prosecutor’s Office maintained that Hernández’s drug trafficking activity is not limited to his two presidential terms, but to his entire political career since at least 2004, a time in which he used his public positions, “so like the Police and the Army” to support drug trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere.

Although during the trial no conclusive evidence was seen – in the form of videos, audios or intercepted communications – that incriminates Hernández, 55, the jury was convinced by the testimonies provided by notorious drug traffickers who have testified against him after having declared guilty before the American Justice, presumably in seeking prison benefits.