On March 8, Hernández, who governed Honduras between 2014 and 2022, was found guilty of drug trafficking and arms trafficking by a jury in the Southern District Court of New York and risks spending the rest of his life in prison. The sentence will be handed down on June 26, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The lawyer “Renato Stabile, representing Juan Orlando Hernández, requested a new trial” invoking US federal regulations, García said in a statement released in Honduras.
The request was presented on Friday by Stabile before the same court that convicted the former president, confirmed in New York the AFP.
One of the arguments to request an annulment of the trial is that an analyst from the US anti-drug agency DEA allegedly “misled the jury by testifying that cocaine trafficking through Honduras increased during the presidency” of Hernández.
“The Prosecutor’s Office knew or should have been aware of this false testimony before the conclusion of the trial and did not correct it, so the conviction must be annulled,” said García, who recently announced that she will seek to be a presidential candidate in the 2025 Honduran elections. .
He stated that “the volume of cocaine that passed through Honduras to the United States decreased 40% since 2014” and also the number of planes suspected of transporting drugs “decreased approximately 30%, to 35 in total” in 2016 compared to 2015.
In addition, he argued that the trial against JOH – as Hernández is known by his initials – should have taken place in the “Southern District of Florida, which was the district to which he was taken for the first time.” [al hacer el avión una escala en ruta su hacia Nueva York] upon being extradited from Honduras.”
Hernández was extradited on April 21, 2022, after being detained weeks after handing over power to the current president, Xiomara Castro.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintained in the trial that the network that JOH protected from the presidency would have sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States and in exchange Hernández would have received millions of dollars from the drug cartels.
On March 18, the Honduran Prosecutor’s Office asked the court to confiscate 131 assets “of illicit origin” from Hernández, his wife and other family members. There are 32 properties, 19 companies and 80 financial products (bank accounts or deposits) on which there has been a precautionary embargo since 2022.
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