Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who ruled the country from 2014 to 2022, was extradited this Thursday (21) to the United States, where he will be tried for drug trafficking and possession of weapons and could be sentenced to prison. life imprisonment.
A plane belonging to the US drug enforcement agency took off from a Honduran Air Force base at 2:27 pm local time, with Hernández on board, handcuffed and wearing a blue jacket and jeans. His extradition had been approved by the Honduran Supreme Court in late March.
Hernandez, who turned himself in to Honduran police in February, was accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for protecting suspected drug traffickers from investigations and prosecutions when he was president.
JOH, as he is also known, has been added to the list of people accused of corruption or undermining democracy in the Northern Triangle of Central America —Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
New York prosecutors accuse the former president, who replaced leftist Xiomara Castro on January 27 after eight years in office, of having links to drug trafficking since 2004. According to the prosecution, he participated in an operation to that Honduras would receive tons of cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela — the drug’s final destination would be the US.
The politician’s brother, former deputy Tony Hernández, was sentenced by the American justice in March 2021 to life imprisonment for the same crime.
JOH denies all the allegations and claims they are revenge driven by the same drug dealers his government captured or extradited to US soil.
The JOH acronym lost the last presidential elections to Xiomara, from Libre (Liberty and Refoundation Party), who became the first woman to assume the presidency of the Central American country. She came to power supported by her husband, former president Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a 2009 coup.
In addition to the economic deterioration and the intense waves of emigration, one of the challenges for the new Honduran leader is the fight against corruption and drug trafficking in the country.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 309,000 arrests of Hondurans at the country’s southern border in the last fiscal year ending September 2021, making nationality the second-largest source of migrants to the country, second only to Mexico, with 608,000 arrests.
