A New York court finds the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández guilty of drug trafficking |

The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was found guilty this Friday by the Federal District Court in New York of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns. The ruling puts an end to a common process in the New York courts due to the large volume of drug traffickers he judges, although in this case the inmate’s outstanding resume elevates him to a higher level. The city’s prisons are full of bosses representing the entire ranks of organized crime.

The ruling consolidates the fall from grace of the former ally of the United States. Almost three years ago, his brother Juan Antonio was also sentenced in New York to life in prison, for the same reason. Two years earlier, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office accused the president, in power at the time, of receiving a million dollars from Joaquín El Chapo Guzman.

Jurors needed just two days to reach a verdict after a trial that lasted two weeks. Hernandez, 55, faces the possibility of being sentenced to life in prison, but it will be up to U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel to determine the sentence soon.

Hernández led Honduras from 2014 to 2022. During his term, the Central American country received more than $50 million from the United States to fight drug trafficking, in addition to tens of millions of dollars in military and security aid. The Justice Department now believes that he abused his power to run Honduras as a narcostateaccepting millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers to protect their cocaine shipments bound for the United States.

During his first presidential campaign in 2013, Hernández, a member of the right-wing National Party of Honduras, made the banner of law and order the main slogan of his electoral program, claiming that it could stop the drug and crime epidemic that had devastated the country and exponentially multiplied the crime figures, especially in San Pedro Sula and the towns adjacent to the main traffic vector, the Pan-American highway.

But the New York prosecutor’s indictment paints a very different picture, in which Hernández was actually an ally of the very forces he claimed to oppose. According to the statements of several knowledgeable witnesses – convicted traffickers from different organizations – Hernández’s political success was fueled by the drug profits channeled to him by cocaine traffickers, whom he treated as business partners and to whom he granted protection. The witnesses also testified that they had bribed Hernández. In turn, the president used drug money to buy officials in order to manipulate the results of the presidential elections in 2013 and 2017 in his favor.

Hernández was arrested and extradited to the United States in April 2022, three months after leaving office. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of drug trafficking conspiracy and weapons possession. He has been incarcerated at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center – known for the large presence of drug lords behind bars – since his extradition.

Faced with the overwhelming display of evidence and testimonies, the former president’s lawyers argued that prosecutors were relying on the not always reliable testimonies of criminals interested in reducing their own sentences and taking revenge for Hernández’s offensive against the cartels. Testifying in his own defense on March 5, Hernández denied meeting or accepting bribes from traffickers, including Mexican kingpin El Chapo. “He had a policy against all those people because he couldn’t stand them,” Hernández said in court, referring to drug traffickers. “They did a lot of damage in the country.”