Honduras ex-President Hernandez faces long prison term after US drug conviction

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez will be ordered to spend decades in prison when a U.S. judge sentences him later on Wednesday for his conviction on drug and firearm offenses.

Hernandez, 55, faces a mandatory minimum 40-year prison sentence after a Manhattan jury found he accepted millions of dollars in bribes to protect U.S.-bound cocaine shipments belonging to traffickers he once publicly proclaimed to combat.

Federal prosecutors have urged U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel to sentence Hernandez to life in prison, to send a message to other traffickers and their accomplices in government.

“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 led Honduras, a U.S. ally in Central America, from 2014 to 2022.

His lawyer Renato Stabile urged Castel to impose no more than 40 years, calling that effectively a life sentence, and said Hernandez would continue to fight his conviction.

“Mr. Hernandez did more to combat narcotrafficking in Honduras than any Honduran President before or since,” Stabile wrote.

The sentencing hearing begins at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) in Manhattan federal court.

Hernandez has been jailed in Brooklyn since his April 2022 extradition from Tegucigalpa.

During a two-week trial, prosecutors said Hernandez used drug money to bribe officials and manipulate voting results during Honduras’ 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. Several convicted traffickers testified they bribed Hernandez.

Testifying in his own defense, Hernandez denied taking bribes from drug cartels.

His lawyers, meanwhile, accused the convicted traffickers of being out for revenge over Hernandez’s anti-drug policies.

In May, Castel denied Hernandez’s bid for a new trial.

Hernandez had argued that a U.S. drug enforcement agent mistakenly testified that cocaine trafficking had gone up, not down, during his presidency.

But the judge called that issue “immaterial” to whether Hernandez conspired with traffickers.

Hernandez’s younger brother, Tony Hernandez, was sentenced to life in prison in March 2021 following his conviction on drug charges.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York)