:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/grupoclarin/6QRRE7GX2VCB7KVYFDNZHOCKJQ.jpg "Outlook becomes complicated for former president of Honduras before trial for drug trafficking in the US")
TEGUCIGALPA (AP) — The confessions before the US justice system of a former police chief and a cousin and member of that force would complicate the situation of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, accused of drug trafficking in the United States and who will be put on trial starting on next Monday.
The former president was accused along with the former director of the National Police Juan Carlos Bonilla – alias “El Tigre” – and the former officer Mauricio Hernández Pineda, cousin of the former president and who last Friday decided to plead guilty to one of the charges against him after arriving to an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Southern District of New York seeking to evade a possible life sentence.
Surprisingly, the former police chief also made the decision to plead guilty to collaborating with drug trafficking before Judge Kevin Castel, which according to criminal lawyer Marlon Duarte has worsened the situation of the former ruler (2014-2022).
“The fact that the Prosecutor’s Office has accepted (Bonilla) a plea agreement, apart from being a good way out for the defense, is a strategy for the Prosecutor’s Office because it reinforces the accusatory thesis that it is an organized structure made up of the three authors who are on trial and who fulfilled a role that led to the conspiracy for drug trafficking,” Duarte explained to The Associated Press.
According to the lawyer, the guilty plea of Bonilla and Hernández Pineda harms the former president who, he said, should “reach a negotiation with the Prosecutor’s Office and plead guilty to avoid a life sentence.”
However, it is not so simple since reaching these agreements requires the will of the Prosecutor’s Office and the former president being able to provide valuable information that will serve in future accusations and arrests in relation to drug trafficking gangs in Honduras, warned Duarte. .
The other options are to face trial or plead guilty without reaching an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, but in both cases you are exposed to a life sentence.
“If he faces trial and the jury is detrimental to him (Juan Orlando Hernández). 99.9% of the trials of drug traffickers, not only Hondurans, have always been convicted since 1992,” he explained.
Hernández is the second former president of Latin America to be prosecuted for drug trafficking, after the conviction of Panamanian Manuel Noriega in 1992.
The lawyer and former general commissioner of the National Police, Leandro Osorio Camales, shared the same vision and told AP that Hernández would be a “kamikaze” if he goes to trial on Monday.
He considered that Bonilla and Hernández Pineda have become “star witnesses” of the Prosecutor’s Office and that the former president has only four days to redirect his strategy.
“If he believes that by going to trial he will succeed, it is a lie,” said Osorio Canales and added that if the Prosecutor’s Office accepted the guilty pleas of the other two defendants it is because they have relevant information that could involve figures from political and business life. .
“This will mean a before. and a later in Honduras,” she pointed out.
Hondurans also see little chance that former President Hernández will be acquitted in the trial.
“I think the fact that ‘Tigre’ Bonilla has pleaded guilty complicates the situation for him,” commented coach Ariel Mendoza, 26 years old.
For engineer Mauricio Rodríguez, 56, if the evidence against the former president is overwhelming, the best thing he could do is plead guilty, but “knowing him as a public figure, in addition to his intelligence, he has a very high ego and is guiding his strategy to what he believes.”