New York Metropolis, United States – Bundled towards the chilly gusts of a New York winter, Cecilio Alfaro braved the morning rush to reach at Manhattan’s Monetary District simply after dawn at 7am on Tuesday.
A longtime United States resident, previously from Honduras, Alfaro wore a beanie hat patterned with the colors of the American flag. He was dressed for a once-in-a-lifetime trial, overseen by federal prosecutors.
The defendant in query was none aside from former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who — after styling himself as a tough-on-crime conservative — now faces medication and weapons prices.
Prosecutors accuse him of operating a “corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy” whereas in workplace, by which he accepted thousands and thousands of {dollars} in trade for facilitating cocaine shipments to the US.
The trial has captured public consideration inside Honduras and its diaspora, with observers like Alfaro seeing the hearings as a referendum on Hernández’s two phrases as president.
“There’s so much evidence against” Hernández, Alfaro instructed Al Jazeera after making it previous the tight safety contained in the Southern District Court docket of New York.
Climbing twenty-three tales, Alfaro joined dozens of journalists and curious residents who packed the courthouse, glued to a closed-circuit video of the proceedings.
“The people suffered so much in Honduras,” Alfaro stated. “There’s going to be justice, divine justice.”
Hernandez’s divisive legacy
The trial is likely one of the most consequential in years for Hondurans, because it weighs the legacy of one of many nation’s most divisive figures in current historical past.
“The great majority” of Hondurans, radio journalist Pablo Zapata instructed Al Jazeera, “are really on the edge of their seats with this case”.
Generally recognized by his initials JOH, Hernández got here to energy in 2014, campaigning on the promise of “una vida mejor” — a greater life — for on a regular basis Hondurans.
“Honduras is going through one of the most difficult periods when it comes to security,” Hernández stated in his inauguration speech. On the time, the nation confronted excessive charges of crimes linked to drug trafficking.
Hernández pledged to handle the issue via “mano dura” — or “iron fist” — insurance policies. That included the deployment of navy forces to the streets. “The party is over for criminals,” he introduced.
Nevertheless it didn’t take lengthy for accusations of corruption and human rights abuses to pile up towards Hernández’s administration.
Early in his tenure, in 2015, Hernández confronted allegations he had siphoned cash from Honduras’s Social Safety Institute. Critics later blamed him for failing to guard public figures like environmental activist Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in 2016.
His reelection in 2017 was likewise tarnished by suspicions of electoral fraud.
In court docket this week, US prosecutors described Hernández as a frontrunner who used his place for private achieve, remodeling Honduras right into a “narco-state”. In a single case, they allege he collected roughly $1 million from the Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in trade for shielding the Sinaloa cartel.
Hernández has pleaded not responsible, and his legal professionals argued this week that he, in truth, stood as much as drug trafficking.
On Wednesday, protection legal professional Renato Stabile used his opening assertion to inform the jury that most of the anticipated witnesses — former drug traffickers who declare to have been protected by Hernández — can’t be trusted due to their violent pasts, insinuating that they had exaggerated or lied in trade for lowered sentences.
“You’re going to hear from a lot of devils,” Stabile stated.
Critics questions former US help
In the meantime, the US Justice Division, below President Joe Biden, has taken a robust stance towards Hernández, formally labelling him a “corrupt and undemocratic actor”.
In February 2022, simply weeks after he left workplace, Hernández was arrested at his dwelling within the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa. Two months later, the previous president was extradited to the US to face prices.
His fall from grace got here after the US authorities pursued his youthful brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a congressional deputy.
In 2018, Tony was arrested in Miami for trafficking 185 tonnes of cocaine in addition to firearms. Three years later, in 2021, a US court docket sentenced him to life in jail, the end result of a trial that had additionally implicated the Honduran president.
However some critics, together with Canadian human rights activist Karen Spring, see Hernández’s trial as an opportunity to demand accountability from the US as nicely. They accuse the US of complicity within the circumstances that led to Hernández’s presidency.
The US has an in depth, and controversial, historical past of involvement in Honduras — from its early Twentieth-century grip on the nation’s fruit trade to its use of Honduras as base of operations throughout the Chilly Battle.
In 2009, Honduras skilled a navy coup d’état that resulted in Hernández’s conservative Nationwide Celebration taking again energy. The US briefly suspended help to Honduras within the aftermath — however that measure proved to be short-lived.
By the point Hernández was in workplace, the US noticed Hernández as a key ally in increasing its “drug war” and stemming towards northbound migration. Beneath presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the US despatched Honduras thousands and thousands of {dollars} in navy and safety help.
All of the whereas, Spring instructed Al Jazeera, Hernández was allegedly utilizing navy and police forces to guard drug traffickers.
She is a part of “Putting the US and Canada On Trial”, a marketing campaign scheduled to coincide with Hernández’s court docket case that seeks accountability for crimes dedicated in Honduras.
“The US and Canadian governments ignored warning signs that JOH was involved in organised crime for years,” Spring stated.
“Instead, both countries continued to politically support JOH, describing him as a drug war ally, all while he trafficked narcotics using Honduran state security forces under his command.”
Issues persist into the current
Different activists and journalists see Hernández’s trial as a mirror for ongoing struggles throughout the Central American nation.
José Luis Guillén, a TV journalist for TeleCeiba and Radio America, stated the trial has generated intense scrutiny throughout all sectors of society, with high-profile witnesses anticipated to be referred to as.
“It’s being talked about everywhere [in Honduras], not just in the government,” Guillén stated of the trial. “Because it could implicate TV channels, business interests, gangs. It’s a daily conversation.”
Some critics have already singled out the Honduran information media’s position within the scandal.
Cristián Sánchez, a unbiased journalist residing in Washington, DC, helps run the Professional-Honduras Community, a civil society organisation specialising in exposing corruption.
He stated that, whereas the widespread press protection of Hernández’s trial is welcome, it comes after years of silence from media retailers that didn’t cowl Hernández’s excesses. Some, he believes, could have been purchased off.
“For years, it was prohibited to talk about Hernández in Honduras — above all, on corporate channels,” Sánchez stated. “Juan Orlando financed many of these journalists to the tune of millions of dollars so they wouldn’t talk about him.”
Sánchez was fast so as to add, nonetheless, that the violence and human rights abuses that existed below Hernández persist into the current, regardless of Honduras having a brand new, left-leaning administration in energy.
For his half, land rights activist Yoni Rivas sees Hernández as merely the severed head of legal constructions that proceed to function in Honduras right now.
These networks “include bankers, politicians, and businessmen”, he instructed Al Jazeera in Tocoa, a part of a area in Honduras the place not less than a dozen land and water defenders have been assassinated or forcibly disappeared over the previous 12 months.
Nonetheless, Rivas thinks Hernández’s trial will shine a light-weight on the disgraced president’s legacy.
“The level of impunity that Juan Orlando generated, and the power he achieved through his allies, continue creating conditions of violence in Honduras. We’re still going to keep suffering violence here.”