Hondurans cheer a rare win over their corrupt politicians, far from home
A US court convicts former right-wing President Juan Orlando Hernandez of narco-trafficking.
By Jared Olson
Published On 11 Mar 2024
11 Mar 2024
New York City, New York – The defendant, greying and pale after two years in a jail cell, lowered his head in a final prayer as the verdict was read.
For almost three weeks, defence lawyers for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez had tried to persuade jurors in a federal courtroom here that the state’s witnesses of convicted drug traffickers and murderers were liars and their testimony – that they operated under the former president’s protection as part of a “narco-state” – was untrustworthy.
But Hernandez’s prayers would go unanswered and his attorneys’ words unheeded as jurors found the ex-president guilty on all three counts of drugs and weapons charges, concluding a fall from grace so epic that it mirrors that of late Panamanian President Manuel Antonio Noriega, who was convicted 32 years ago in a federal courthouse in Miami of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Medellin drug cartel.
Like Noriega, Hernandez was once a staunch United States ally in its “War on Drugs”. Representing a deeply conservative Honduran political party, Hernandez portrayed himself as a law and order candidate in his 2013 presidential campaign, promising to reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the country and the violence that stemmed from it.
He did neither, according to the Honduran people, and instead ushered in a period of state repression targeting dissidents and the country’s Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean population, the most notable of whom was the environmental activist Berta Caceres, who was assassinated in 2016 by a local business executive with ties to the government.
More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/hondurans-cheer-a-rare-win-over-their-corrupt-politicians-far-from-home
Berta Cáceres, murdered by Honduran oligarchs, cherished, respected by Honduran citizens.
