Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández goes on trial this week in New York City for overseeing a massive cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Washington learned of his dealings with narco-cartels soon after it backed a coup that brought him to power.
When then-Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández, set out for a pleasant jog along the National Mall while on an official state visit to Washington DC on August 13, 2019, he seemed not to have a care in the world.
“Daily exercise, healthy eating, and drinking lots of water = better health and quality of life,” he advised followers in a Twitter post that included photos of his jaunt around DC’s National Mall.
When US officials returned Hernández stateside less than three years later, however, they were not interested in an elementary health consultation — but in taking the former president to trial over allegations that he converted the Honduran state into a de facto drug cartel.
“Juan Orlando effectively operated Honduras as a narco-state, acquiring political power through narcotics-fueled bribes and maintaining it by allowing the free flow of drugs through Honduras,” US government prosecutors alleged in a May 1 motion filed in the Southern District of New York.
Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment targeting Hernández on April 21, 2022, the same day that Honduras extradited him to the US. He currently faces three drug and weapons smuggling charges in the Southern District of New York, including one count of conspiracy to import cocaine to the United States. His trial begins this week, on September 18.
The Hernández indictment stemmed from a separate case lodged against the president’s younger brother, Tony, who was convicted alongside other members of the conspiracy of nearly identical charges in October 2019. At the time of the elder Hernández’s visit to Washington DC the previous month, he had already been named as a co-conspirator in his brother’s narco empire. Tony Hernández was sentenced to life in prison in January 2020.
The Hernández brothers’ fall from grace highlights the bizarre—and seemingly contradictory— nature of Washington’s “War on Drugs.” As this two-part investigative series will detail, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials confirmed President Hernández’s direct involvement in narcotrafficking within days of his 2014 inauguration, yet continued to collaborate with his administration, keeping it flush with cash and protected from legal scrutiny.
In private, Juan Orlando Hernández vowed to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” while in public, he was heartily embraced by Obama administration officials, including the current US president, Joe Biden. Despite possessing intimate knowledge of Hernández’s criminal activities, officials in the Obama White House worked tirelessly to keep his presidency afloat. While drug war refugees and narcotics from the country flooded American streets, Washington transferred over one billion dollars into Honduran state coffers.
Hernández’s ascent to power in Tegucigalpa came five years after Honduran military forces removed the country’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, in a US-backed coup. Despite a constitutional one term limit on the Honduran presidency, Washington would go on to provide key political support for Hernández’s subsequent reelection bid, which succeeded following a November 2017 vote so crooked that even Western corporate media eventually demanded an electoral do-over.
The Honduran national nightmare began early one morning in 2009, when military officials in Tegucigalpa toppled a popular president who promised to usher in a new constitution that would guarantee unprecedented economic rights to the country’s citizens.
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https://thegrayzone.com/2023/09/18/trial-honduran-president-narco-state/
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