NEW YORK (AP) — Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández used to be sentenced Wednesday in Unutilized York for his conviction on fees that he enabled drug traffickers to usefulness his army and nationwide police power to aid get heaps of cocaine into the US.
Pass judgement on P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a U.S. jail and fined him $8 million. A jury convicted him in March in Long island federal courtroom next a two-week trial, which used to be carefully adopted in his house nation.
“I am innocent,” Hernández stated at his sentencing. “I was wrongly and unjustly accused.”
Castel referred to as Hernández a “two-faced politician hungry for power” who safe a choose crew of traffickers.
Hernández used to be in a complete inexperienced jail uniform as he mounted in courtroom along with his attorneys. Two U.S. marshals stood at the back of him.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of generation in jail, plus 30 years.
Hernández, 55, served two phrases because the chief of the Central American society of kind of 10 million crowd.
Hernández used to be arrested at his house in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, 3 months next depart place of business in 2022 and used to be extradited to the U.S. in April of that while.
U.S. prosecutors say Hernández labored with drug traffickers as way back as 2004, taking tens of millions of greenbacks in bribes as he rose from rural congressman to president of the Nationwide Congress and nearest to the rustic’s easiest place of business.
Hernández stated in trial testimony that drug cash used to be paid to just about all political events in Honduras, however he denied accepting bribes himself.
Hernández insisted in a long remark made via an interpreter that his trial used to be unjust as a result of he used to be no longer allowed to incorporate proof that may have brought about the jury to search out him no longer responsible. He stated he used to be being persecuted via politicians and drug traffickers.
“It’s as if I had been thrown into a deep river with my hands bound,” he stated.
Trial observers incorporated traffickers who admitted accountability for dozens of murders and stated Hernández used to be an ambitious protector of one of the crucial global’s maximum robust cocaine sellers, together with infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who’s serving a generation jail time period within the U.S.
His brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Honduran congressman, used to be sentenced to generation in a U.S. jail in 2021 in Long island federal courtroom for his personal conviction on drug fees.
