Q24N — The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022) was sentenced this Wednesday to 45 years in prison and five more years of supervised release by a New York court for several crimes related to drug trafficking and the use of weapons, thus free of the life sentence requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Judge Kevin Castel also imposed a fine of US$8 million dollars, and called on his lawyer to clarify in two weeks how he will pay them.
Among the Hondurans who were at the entrance, about twenty with flags of their country, there were no apparent celebrations, perhaps because they expected a greater sentence.
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In addition, the judge indicated that he will decide in 120 days which prison will be where Hernández, 55 years old and currently in Brooklyn jail, will have to serve his sentence.
Castel told him, before pronouncing the sentence, that he was “a man with two faces”: with one he proclaimed his commitment against drug trafficking, and with the other he facilitated the export of tons of cocaine to the United States, drugs that amounted to a worth 10 million dollars, he added.
Furthermore, he proclaimed that this sentence – if he fulfills it in full he will be released from prison with 100 years – sent a message “to the educated and well dressed so that they do not believe that they are going to escape the accusations.”
Hernández, who looked very old, with gray hair and a gray beard, in addition to a cane that he did not take off, listened to the sentence almost without flinching, perhaps because it is closer to what his defense requested (40 years). ) than to the perpetuity requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
He only used his turn to speak after the sentence to ask if he could keep Renato Stabile as his lawyer, to which the judge answered affirmatively at least until the appeal lasts, if it occurs.
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