Juan Orlando Hernandez, increasingly complicated: Former Honduran president arrives at his trial in the US with new drug trafficking charges

JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ, the former Honduran president accused of drug trafficking, is hours away from appearing in court. The trial of a Central American politician begins in Southern District Court of New York It is scheduled to begin this Monday, February 12 with jury selection. Hernandez will stand alone before the judge, after two other defendants pleaded guilty in recent days. He will be wearing, yes, the same clothes he wore when he took office as president of Honduras in 2018. his wife, Ana Garcia de HernandezFrom that day he sent a two-piece suit and a blue tie.

Hernandez had just handed over the presidency of his country Xiomara Castro, the winner of the election in late 2021, when he was detained at his home in the capital Tegucigalpa for purposes of extradition to the United States, where a New York court wanted him for being part of a conspiracy to import cocaine. and weapons in the United States. Joined On February 15, 2022, Honduran officials turned him over to US Marshals, who put him on a plane and guarded him during the flight to New York.

Two years later, after several extensions requested by the prosecution and defense because of the overwhelming evidence, Hernandez is preparing to face a judge alone. Kevin Castle, serving the Southern District of New York. In theory, the trial was scheduled to begin on September 18, 2023, but it was last postponed to February 5 and then to February 12; Between those two dates the case changed radically: the prosecutor’s office was ready to use the testimony. Two former Honduran officials who recently pleaded guilty, Police officers who served under Hernandez, against the former president.

The former police officers had little to say, according to documents and transcripts previously presented by prosecutors as preliminary evidence. one of them, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, alias El Tigre and former director of the Honduran National Police during Hernandez’s time, said he helped some drug traffickers in their business. Testimonies from third parties, also presented at trial, indicate that Bonilla served as a hitman for the former president and his brother, a former deputy. ANTONIO TONY HERNANDEZHe was also sentenced to life in prison in 2021 for drug trafficking in New York.

So far, the former president’s public defense has been political. The US Prosecutors, Hernandez said, built the case on the testimony of drug traffickers when he was president of Honduras. The former president has also insisted that he was his important ally Washington in The war on drugs In Central America. Therefore, for the prosecution, the testimony of Tigre Bonilla is important: the former police director says that he and his bosses trafficked drugs at the state level.

The start of the trial, scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Monday, February 12, in Room 11D of the South Court Building in Manhattan, New York, near Wall Street, comes as a shock to Honduras, where the president’s political footprint is still present. . He National PartyHernández, under whose banner he was twice elected president, first in 2013 and second in 2017 through a controversial re-election upheld at the last minute by the Supreme Court, continues to live under the shadow of these and other allegations against him. leaders and officials, but it is still the main opposition party.

High-level officials of those governments, including the former Attorney General Oscar the chinchilla and former Minister of Defense Julian PachecoThe witnesses have been named in the charging documents filed by the prosecution in the case against Hernandez.

What are those documents? American Govt The tale is the story of a president who came to amass a good deal of state power through bribery, assassination, collusion with major drug-trafficking organizations and, as prosecutors have confirmed in recent months, a deal with MS13The most important gang Central America with a presence in Honduras and which, according to audio presented for trial, the former president used to eliminate potential witnesses.

Hernandez’s defense in New York, led by a lawyer Raymond Colon, has supported his client’s thesis; Everything, they say, is revenge from drug traffickers. Renato Stabile, a defender whom the court appointed two weeks ago at Hernandez’s request, complained of not having enough time to review all the evidence presented by prosecutors and requested an adjournment of one to six months, in addition to soliciting potential jurors. , to be selected at the beginning of the process, submit a written questionnaire. Last Thursday, February 8, Judge Castel denied both requests.

A day earlier, on February 7, prosecutors presented new evidence that, from what they disclosed in documents released by the court, could harm Hernandez’s interests.

There are four audio recordings of calls made by the new evidence Alexander Mendoza, aka Porky, one of the top leaders of the MS13 gang in Honduras who has been implicated in the former president’s alleged illegal activities as a witness in other cases against Honduran drug traffickers. What Porky says is revealing.

It’s not just the content of the calls, it’s who makes them. Alexander MendozaPorky, was accused of planning the murder Neri Lopez SanabriaNickname Mezza of the Magdalene, a drug trafficker who was an associate of Tony Hernandez, the president’s brother, and who had a cocaine-trafficking notebook detailing shipments involving Juan Orlando Hernandez. López Sanabria was murdered in October 2019 in an El Pozo, Honduran prison, allegedly at the behest of Porky and in collusion with state agents.

Then, in February 2020, Porky escaped from a Honduran prison where he was being held for his connection to several murders. From there he was extracted by Special Forces commandos, who, according to a senior Honduran intelligence official who spoke with Infobay Anonymous for security reasons, he had the connivance of police and military authorities. The source confirmed that the gang leader was working for Hernandez.

Prosecutors classified Porky’s calls with four alphanumeric codes, one for each communication made between June 5 and November 18, 2015, with various associates and acquaintances. In the calls, gang leaders Juan Orlando and Antonio talk about business with Tony Hernandez, as well as dealings with them. JUAN CARLOS TIGRE BONILLAA former police chief who pleaded guilty and whose testimony could be used in the former president’s trial.

First is the audio GX403. It includes a call in which Porky speaks to an unidentified woman, named in court documents as CC-1, and tells her that Hernandez’s government “won’t last long” Because “there is an intercepted call to Bonilla (former police chief)” that says The former president received millions of dollars from drug traffickers like the Los Valle Vale clanAt the beginning of the last decade, one of the most powerful in the country.

The second call, code GX404, was made on June 19, 2015. Porky talks to another gang leader, who he says Hernandez ordered to form an elite force to kill. Baron RuizA drug trafficker they worked with, to prevent him from falling into the hands of the United States and then expose him if he decided to cooperate with the Americans.

The communications will serve to support one of their hypotheses for prosecutors: Juan Orlando Hernandez and his partners in drug trafficking – dubbed the “conspiracy” in court documents – used gang members and police to eliminate potential witnesses such as Ruiz or Lopez Sanabria.

In an audio cataloged as GX405, from June 29, 2015, Porky and two other gang members talk about Los Cachiros, another important gang in Honduras, whose leaders, Bro. Davis Lionel and Javier Rivera MaradiagaThey were delivered to the United States that year. CachirosAccording to Porky, the Americans confessed to the kidnappers that they shared cocaine routes with Hernandez as part of a deal involving several key players in the Honduran drug trade in the early 2010s.

GX406 is the label of the last audio produced by the prosecution through a document presenting evidence received by the court on February 8. There Porky discusses with his colleagues the exact route used to send money and other contraband. In this communication the gang members also affirm that Tigre Bonilla has allowed contraband to pass For USD 5,000 (bribe).

Porky’s audio joins dozens of documents, transcripts, photographs and screenshots that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have released since Juan Orlando Hernandez appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. This evidence will be presented during the trial along with the testimony they give District Court Room 11 d8 to 12 witnesses were produced by the prosecution.

Kevin Castle, the judge handling the case, expects the entire process to last between two and three weeks, according to a letter in which he denied a defense request to postpone the trial’s start date. The mandatory part, according to the calculations of the prosecutors, will begin in the second week, which is the third of February, when the parade of witnesses will begin, among whom it is known for now. DAVIS LIONEL RIVERA MARADIAGAOne of the leaders of the Los Cachiros drug gang and Fabio WolfSon of former Honduran President Porfirio Wolff and who had already been sentenced for drug trafficking.

Rivera Maradiaga and Lobo, prosecutors predict, will help bolster the central thesis of the case: Former President Hernandez was the main figure A criminal conspiracy that transported tens of thousands of tons of cocaine across Honduran territory for more than a decade to transport it to the United States. The prosecution, in its charging document, described it this way: “Juan Orlando had incredible influence and allied with some of the most notorious drug traffickers in Honduras and allowed them to flourish under his control. These drug traffickers, while developing their operations, worked closely in relation to drug shipments and to neutralize common threats. They did this, in part, by paying Bribing and providing support to high level government and police officials. “This symbiotic relationship, and the cycle of corruption and money that fostered it, was at the heart of the alleged conspiracy.”

Juan Orlando Hernandez, once the most powerful man in Honduras, will spend his days in court starting next Monday, February 12. He will arrive at his appointment wearing the two-piece suit and blue tie with which he has become the President of his country for the second time.