Former Honduran President Sentenced to 45 Years for Helping Traffickers Get Tons of Cocaine Into US

Former Honduran President Sentenced to 45 Years for Helping Traffickers Get Tons of Cocaine Into US
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (2nd R) is taken in handcuffs to a waiting aircraft as he is extradited to the United States at an Air Force base in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on April 21, 2022. Elmer Martinez/AP Photo
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NEW YORK—A defiant former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in New York Wednesday to 45 years in prison for teaming up with some bribe-paying drug traffickers for over a decade to ensure over 400 tons of cocaine made it to the United States.

Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a U.S. prison and fined him $8 million, saying that the penalty should serve as a warning to “well educated, well dressed” individuals who gain power and think their status insulates them from justice when they do wrong.