Honduras ex-president sentenced to 45 years for helping drug traffickers
Al Jazeera
Juan Orlando Hernandez says he was ‘wrongly accused’ at sentencing hearing for conviction on drugs and weapons charges.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras once seen as an important US ally with tough-on-crime politics, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for his conviction on drugs and weapons charges.
A Manhattan jury in March found Hernandez, 55, guilty of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect United States-bound cocaine shipments belonging to traffickers he once publicly proclaimed to combat.
US District Judge Kevin Castel passed down the sentence in a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday.
“I am innocent,” the 55-year-old Hernandez, who led the Central American nation from 2014 until 2022, said at his sentencing. “I was wrongly and unjustly accused.”
Hondurans at home and abroad had cheered the conviction, celebrating it as a rare instance of accountability for corruption and deceit by a member of the country’s ruling class.
