How a narco-state is built: All set for ex-Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez’s trial in New York

Judge Kevin Castle He didn’t say much earlier in the year, when he turned down a new request from lawyer Raymond Colón, a defender of the former Honduran president. JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZTo adjourn for 45 days the trial for drug trafficking and arms trafficking, which is scheduled to begin. Next February 5. Health reasons, Colon alleges, have prevented him from studying the extensive judicial file in depth. Castel denied it and, barring a possible last-minute appeal, is all set to go to court. Southern Borough of Manhattan A jury is set to hear charges against the man who was the most powerful man in Honduras for nearly a decade and, according to US prosecutors who charged him, turned his country into a narco-state in which political power was at his service. Big companies. Cocaine traffickers including Sinaloa “Chapo” Joaquín Guzmán Loera.

Led the prosecution team in May last year Damian Williams They presented a brief to the court in which they summarized their case and previewed the evidence and testimony they would present during the trial. The thesis presented in that document is that Juan Orlando He financed his political career with money from drug trafficking, who once established criminal ties with the country’s main traffickers in power and who, in the end, replaced that boss. That, prosecutors allege, plunged Honduras into misery and violence.

Williams and his followers wrote in a 96-page indictment they filed in court on May 1, 2023, that “drug trafficking with the support of Juan Orlando and the assistance of high-ranking officials … resulted in chaos and directly contributed to criminal violence, corruption, and the crisis of poverty.” was

From what was said by the prosecutors, it is understood that the United States, which at times was one of the main political supporters of Juan Orlando Hernandez, suspected the criminal activities of the former president and his staff since at least 2014. The year he surrendered to American federal agents DAVIS LIONEL RIVERA MARADIAGA

Gang leader CachirosOne of the most powerful in Honduras since the turn of the century, whose testimony was one of the first to directly implicate the then president with criminal enterprises.

Also in 2014, American agents, supported by the then Director General of the Honduran Police Ramon SabilonThey arrested the brothers Miguel Arnulfo and Luis Alonso Valle ValleWho North American prosecutors have identified as the head of the most important drug cartel since Juan Orlando Hernandez became president after winning the election a year earlier.

Sabilon, the police director who caught the drug trafficker, interrogates Welles; They first told him that the brother of the then President was fully involved in the cocaine trafficking business.

Earlier that year, Leandro Osorio, then head of police intelligence, received information that a hill IgualaNear Gracias, the town where Hernandez was born, was located A laboratory where cocaine and marijuana were processed. Osorio arrived at the scene and detained two people, including a Colombian, whom he sent to the Ministry of Public Affairs (MP) office in Gracias. The police officer, very soon realized that the prosecutors were dragging their feet in the investigation; He did not understand until someone told him that the captured people had the protection of “an important politician”. Osorio later found out that this was a politician Juan Antonio “Tony” HernandezPresident’s brother.

Suspicions of investigators, both from the United States and Hondurans who were able to investigate the country’s most powerful man, had only grown since 2014.

Los Cachiros and Los Valle Valle were captured after the fall in 2015. Fabio Wolf, son of former President Porfirio Lobo, known in Honduras as JOH’s predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernandez. In 2017, they made an arrest in Guatemala Victor Hugo Diaz Morales, aka El Rojo, another Honduran drug trafficker. In 2020 he was arrested in Miami, Giovanni Fuentes Ramirez, a drug trafficker who later revealed to be Hernandez’s partner in a drug laboratory in northern Honduras. For years, these men told agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI how they connected with President Hernandez and how he built his criminal empire.

JOH’s brother Tony Hernandez was arrested in Miami in 2018. He was tried and sentenced in 2021 to two life sentences. Several drug traffickers arrested before him were witnesses at his trial; They told the story that, prosecutors hope, jurors in the Juan Orlando trial will hear again, the story of a political group that financed its operation with drug money and ended up as the protagonist of the movement of cocaine through one of the critical routes. of the continent, which connects shipments arriving by air from Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador to Central America with exits northward through Guatemala and Mexico.

US prosecutors describe him this way: “Juan Orlando…had incredible influence and allied with some of Honduras’ most notorious drug traffickers 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 bribing and providing support to high-level government and law enforcement officials. This symbiotic relationship, and the cycle of corruption and money that fostered it, was at the heart of the alleged conspiracy.

“That’s what people say. At the head of this conspiracy, the agents put former President Hernandez.

Along with Juan Orlando Hernandez, two other former Honduran officials will sit in the dock during the trial, which begins in two weeks. They are Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladaresalias El Tigre, former director of the National Police (PN) and head of hitmen in the service of JOH according to the Americans, and Mauricio Hernandez PinedaAnother former police officer and cousin of the former president, who received up to USD 200,000 for each shipment of cocaine he secured.

Several drug traffickers arrested since 2014 who voluntarily surrendered to the United States, such as “Cachiro” Davis Lionel Rivera Maradiaga, are expected to be brought to a New York court to serve as witnesses. In charging documents, prosecutors testify from at least four.

Fabio Lobo, son of the former president, will also testify Porfirio WolffThe confirmation was made on January 17 by the Pro-Honduras Network, a non-profit organization formed by Hondurans living in the United States who have closely followed the trials of drug traffickers in their country since it began in the middle of the last decade.

In September 2017, Lobo was sentenced to 24 years in prison after a trial in the Southern District of New York, the same one in which JOH will be tried. During the trial of the Lobo case, Los Cachiros drug trafficker Davis Lionel Rivera testified that The former president’s son helped him move the drugs From the northeast of Honduras to the west of the country, where the cocaine was delivered to the Los Valle Valle cartel. Rivera describes how the shipment was protected by convoys and armored vehicles manned by Lobo, who always said he did everything with Hernández’s blessing.

Prosecutors will present evidence that Lobo arranged the meeting with Los Cachiros to protect them from Honduran officials, with Hernandez’s permission for the cocaine shipment. According to American investigators, one of the collaborators with the drug traffickers is Julián Pacheco Tinoco, Minister of Security during the time of J.H.

What the US prosecutors wanted to say during the trial, if what is said in the indictment is taken into account, is that Juan Orlando Hernandez became the most powerful politician in Honduras, largely, thanks to drug money. In their indictment, the Americans claim that the main domestic coca cartels, such as Wells, Cachiro and others, in addition to The Sinaloa CartelFinanced JOH’s rise to the presidency, and from there, symbiosis with organized crime gave Hernández the power he needed to do many other things, from controlling the entire state apparatus to getting re-elected in 2017 in an irregular manner. While all this was happening, the cocaine route continued to widen.

Juan Orlando Hernandez’s main argument has been that he always was A trusted ally of the United States, from the administration of Barack Obama to the administration of Donald Trump, and Americans always knew what he did. His defenders have gone on to say that this will be the former president’s most important line during the trial.

Douglas Farah, President of IBI Consultants Washington

, DC believes that, in effect, the United States has long suffered from “conscious blindness” regarding Hernandez and his criminal activities. “For a long time, the United States had solid information about Juan Orlando, about Tony Hernandez, but there was a part of the government that thought he was too valuable an asset to lose… He was a drug dealer, but he was our drug. Dealer. ,” says Farah, who was a Central America correspondent for media outlets like The Washington Post in the 80s and is one of the most respected voices on the Central American region in the US capital.

The truth is, when Hernandez ceased to be president in January 2022, Department of Justice, with whom the New York District Attorney is attached, had a criminal case against him. When he left power, things got worse. On February 8, the US canceled his visa. immediately, Washington requested extradition, which was approved and executed in April of that year. Since then, JOH has been awaiting trial in New York.

on April 21, when Hernandez was extradited TegucigalpaThe Justice Department issued a statement describing Hernandez as one of the most important drug lords on the continent in recent years: “He participated in a corrupt and violent drug trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of thousands of kilograms of cocaine. The United States…received millions of dollars to use its public office, law enforcement, and military to support drug trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.”

The United States has previously accused powerful foreign officials of aiding or enriching themselves in drug trafficking. He outed former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega for his ties to drug traffickers, as well as Mexican soldiers and politicians. However, American justice has never charged a former president so clearly Put all the power of the state in the service of the criminal enterprise of this draft.