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The disgraced former president of Honduras will be extradited to the US Thursday to face drug and arms trafficking charges in federal court in New York City, a report said.
The alleged corrupt former head of state, Juan Orlando Hernández, is scheduled to be transported on a flight controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration from the Central American country to the US, NPR reported.
He’ll face drug and weapons trafficking charges in an indictment expected to be unsealed in the Southern District of New York this week, CBS News reported.
Hernández, a onetime ally of the US in the region, led the country for eight years before leaving office in January.
The former president’s brother was convicted of drug trafficking and other charges in Manhattan federal court in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison for the crimes, federal authorities said.
The brother, former Honduran Congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was convicted of distributing some 185 tons of cocaine into the US over a 15-year period through a state-sponsored narcotics conspiracy.
In 2020, federal prosecutors in New York alleged ex-president Hernández shielded a drug trafficker in the country from prosecution in exchange for a $25,000 bribe.
Hernández met with the alleged drug kingpin, Geovanny Daniel Fuentes Ramirez, on a number of occasions beginning in 2013, the feds allege.
Hernández allegedly offered the country’s armed services to protect a cocaine “laboratory” he developed near a commercial shipping port in the nation.
The former president also allegedly directed Ramirez to report directly to his brother in his cocaine trafficking enterprise.
A rep for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately comment.
Source: NYPOST
