Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced in New York on Wednesday to 45 years in jail for helping drug traffickers to take more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US over a decade.
Judge P Kevin Castel handed down Hernandez's sentence and fined him $8 million, saying the penalty should serve as a warning to “well-educated, well-dressed” people who gain power and think their status protects them from justice.
A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan Federal Court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in Honduras.
“I am innocent,” Hernandez said at his sentencing. “I was wrongly and unjustly accused.”
In a lengthy statement interrupted several times by the judge, Hernandez portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who teamed up with American authorities under three US presidents to reduce drug imports.
But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernandez used “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he was a crusader while he sent his nation's police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade.
Mr Castel called Hernandez a “two-faced politician hungry for power” who protected a select group of traffickers.
Hernandez, 55, served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of about 10 million people.
He was arrested at his home in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, three months after leaving office in 2022 and was extradited to the US in April that year.
US prosecutors say Hernandez worked with drug traffickers as far back as 2004, taking millions of dollars in bribes as he rose from rural congressman to president of the National Congress, and then to the country’s highest office.
During the trial, prosecutors said Hernandez used drug money to bribe officials and manipulate voting results during Honduras's 2013 and 2017 presidential elections.
He acknowledged in trial testimony that drug money was paid to virtually all political parties in Honduras, but he denied accepting bribes himself.
Trial witnesses included traffickers who admitted responsibility for dozens of murders and said Hernandez was an enthusiastic protector of some of the world’s most powerful cocaine dealers, including notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life prison term in the US.
During his remarks, the judge said Guzman had given a $1 million bribe in 2013 directly to Hernandez's brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, a former Honduran congressman who was sentenced to life in a US prison in 2021 in New York after a conviction on drug charges.
“Without corrupt politicians like the defendant, the kind of large-scale, international drug trafficking at issue in this case, and the rampant drug-related violence that follows, is difficult if not impossible,” prosecutors wrote on Monday.
Hernandez's lawyers, meanwhile, accused the convicted traffickers of being out for revenge over his anti-drug policies.
Honduras is still a major transit centre for drugs flowing to the US, and some small coca farms have been found in the country in recent years.
The government of President Xiomara Castro, an opponent of Hernandez, has co-operated with the US on drug seizures and has led a crackdown on street gangs.
