Trial implicating Honduran president in drug trafficking begins in New York

NEW YORK CITY, March 9 ------ The trial of an alleged Honduran drug-trafficker, whose case implicates Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and other high-ranking officials, gets underway in the Southern District of New York on Monday. Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, 50, was arrested trying to leave Miami in 2020 and has pleaded ‘not guilty’ to charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States and related weapons charges.

References to Hernandez appear frequently in the filings against Fuentes Ramirez, as well as in a drug-trafficking case against Hernandez’s brother Tony, who was convicted of drug trafficking and related weapons charges in October 2019. In that trial, U.S. prosecutors said Juan Orlando Hernandez had accepting millions in bribes from drug traffickers. The president has repeatedly denied the allegation.

In a tweet at the time, he said that the verdict was “based on testimonies of confessed murderers,” referring to former drug traffickers who cooperated with U.S. authorities in the trial. In comments to Honduran media, Hernandez has denied all wrongdoing. In Fuentes’ case documents, federal prosecutors accused Hernandez, who has been president since 2014, of using Honduran law enforcement and military officials to protect drug traffickers.

Source: inquierer.net