Former Honduran President Hernández is sentenced to 45 years in jail in New York

Hernandez would spend a number of years in jail / Photograph: EFE

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) was sentenced to 45 years in jail and 5 extra years of probation by a New York court docket for a number of crimes associated to drug trafficking and the usage of weapons, thus avoiding the life sentence requested by the Prosecutor’s Workplace.

Decide Kevin Castel additionally imposed a fantastic of 8 million {dollars} on him, and referred to as on his lawyer to make clear in two weeks how he pays them.

Among the many Hondurans who have been on the entrance, about twenty with flags of their nation, there have been no obvious celebrations, maybe as a result of they anticipated a higher sentence.

As well as, the decide indicated that he’ll determine in 120 days which jail might be the place Hernández, 55 years outdated and at the moment in Brooklyn jail, must serve his sentence.

Judgment

Earlier than announcing the sentence, Castel informed him that he was “a person of two faces”: with one he proclaimed his dedication to combating drug trafficking, and with the opposite he facilitated the export of tons of cocaine to the USA, medicine price 10 million {dollars}, he added.

Moreover, he proclaimed that this sentence – if he fulfills it in full he might be launched from jail with 100 years – despatched a message “to the educated and nicely dressed in order that they don’t imagine that they’re going to escape the accusations.”

Hernández, who seemed very outdated, with grey hair and a grey beard, along with a cane that he by no means took off, listened to the sentence virtually with out flinching, maybe as a result of it was nearer to what his protection requested (40 years). ) than to the perpetuity requested by the Prosecutor’s Workplace.

He solely used his flip to talk after the sentence to ask if he might maintain Renato Stabile as his lawyer, to which the decide answered affirmatively, not less than till the enchantment is finalized, if it happens.

New York / EFE