On Monday, a court in the Southern District of New York began its trial of an alleged Honduran drug-trafficker whose dealings have implicated Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and a number of other senior government officials.
Reports of the trial first came to light after Reuters uncovered a court filing in early February against Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, an alleged Honduran drug trafficker who was arrested in Miami in 2020. The court document also named Hernández and other “high-ranking officials” for their involvement, wherein they are accused of accepting “millions of dollars in drug-trafficking proceeds” and “promising drug traffickers protection from prosecutors, law enforcement, and extradition to the United States”.
The President, in particular, is accused of taking bribes and directing the military to protect a cocaine laboratory and drug shipments to the US. Prosecutors claim that Hernández has “accepted millions of dollars in drug-trafficking proceeds and, in exchange, promised drug traffickers protection from prosecutors, law enforcement, and [later] extradition to the United States”. They further assert that the Honduran government has not been “forthcoming” with investigations, and has provided extremely “limited records” and refused to accede to extradition requests for potential witnesses.
The document quotes the President as having said that he wishes to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos’ by flooding the United States with cocaine”.
Hernández and his allies within the government have been on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) watchlist since 2013. Moreover, the President’s brother, Juan Antonio, was convicted by a New York court in 2019 of accepting over $1 million from Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Honduras has reacted strongly to these accusations. Honduras’ ambassador to the US, Luis Fernando Suazo has described the prosecutors’ claims as “baseless” and said that the words of drug traffickers could not be believed. He said, “They’re the ones who have reason to get revenge, they’re the ones who have reason to reduce their sentences, those are the sources,” adding, “Why don’t we see other types of witnesses, other types of evidence?”
Hernández himself has claimed that a group named “Los Cachiros” is trying to falsely implicate him in the case because he approved the extradition of members of the group to the US, alleging that they “have been repeatedly lying in the most obvious way”. He has also said that the trial is entirely “based on testimonies of confessed criminals who seek revenge or to reduce their sentences.
Against this backdrop, Democratic Senators have pushed US President Joe Biden to introduce sanctions against the Honduran President. Senator Jeff Merkeley, backed by Patrick Leahy and Elizabeth Warren, among others, has said, “A failure to hold Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, national officials, and members of the police and military accountable for these crimes will fuel widespread poverty and violence and force more families to flee their communities in search of safety.” To this end, the Senators tabled a bill that seeks to suspend the delivery of security aid and the export of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets to Honduran security forces.
The trial comes at a most inopportune time for President Hernández, who will soon begin his electoral campaign ahead of the election in November, when he will seek a third term in office. Hernández was elected into power in 2013 and was re-elected in 2017.
It also threatens the ability of the Biden administration to maximise its $4 billion investment in Central America, which seeks to empower the region to address the “root causes” of migration into the US. Under the Trump administration, the US downplayed the severity of these allegations against Hernández in return for cooperation through the Asylum Cooperative Agreement, through which Honduras diverted a number of migrants from entering the US. However, the Biden administration has now suspended the agreement.
The latest trial and the bill tabled by US Senators may now further destabilise relations between the US and Honduras. In fact, in late February, President Hernández warned that if the United States (US) proceeds with the case, “It would mean, sooner or later, that the systems of effective cooperation that I helped build, that have been recognized and praised repeatedly by Washington, inevitably would collapse — and not only in Honduras, but in several countries of the Americas.” The beginning of the trial this week could set the wheels for this collapse in motion.
US District Court Begins Drug Trafficking Trial Implicating Honduran President Hernández
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and a number of government officials are accused of taking bribes and directing the military to protect a cocaine laboratory and drug shipments to the US.
March 9, 2021
IMAGE SOURCE: JORGE CABRERA / REUTERSHonduran President Juan Orlando Hernández