Juan Orlando Hernandez says he was ‘wrongly accused’ at sentencing listening to for conviction on medicine and weapons fees.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, the previous president of Honduras as soon as seen as an vital US ally with tough-on-crime politics, has been sentenced to 45 years in jail for his conviction on medicine and weapons fees.
A Manhattan jury in March discovered Hernandez, 55, responsible of accepting thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes to guard United States-bound cocaine shipments belonging to traffickers he as soon as publicly proclaimed to fight.
US District Choose Kevin Castel handed down the sentence in a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday.
“I’m harmless,” the 55-year-old Hernandez, who led the Central American nation from 2014 till 2022, mentioned at his sentencing. “I used to be wrongly and unjustly accused.”
Hondurans at house and overseas had cheered the conviction, celebrating it as a rare instance of accountability for corruption and deceit by a member of the nation’s ruling class.
In March, the jury discovered that the previous chief, usually recognized by his initials JOH, had taken thousands and thousands of {dollars} in bribes to defend giant shipments of cocaine sure for the US.
Prosecutors had requested for a life sentence, arguing that it might ship a agency message to different politicians who use their energy to guard highly effective prison teams.
“With out corrupt politicians just like the defendant, the form of large-scale, worldwide drug trafficking at subject on this case, and the rampant drug-related violence that follows, is troublesome if not unimaginable,” prosecutors wrote on Monday.
Throughout a two-week trial, prosecutors mentioned Hernandez used drug cash to bribe officers and manipulate voting outcomes throughout Honduras’s 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. A number of convicted traffickers testified they bribed Hernandez.
Testifying in his personal defence, Hernandez denied taking bribes from drug cartels.
His attorneys, in the meantime, accused the convicted traffickers of being out for revenge over Hernandez’s anti-drug insurance policies.
JOH’s brother Tony Hernandez was sentenced to life in jail within the US in 2021 on drug fees.