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 8 million dollars and asked his lawyer to clarify within two weeks how he will pay it. The judge also said that he will decide within 120 days which prison Hernández, 55 years old and currently in the Brooklyn jail, will 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. In addition, he proclaimed that this sentence sent a message “to the educated and well dressed so that they do not believe that they are going to escape accusations.”
Hernández, who looked very old, 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.
(efe, afp/mn)
