MANHATTAN (CN) — Resting their case Monday afternoon, federal prosecutors called on a bevy of convicted drug traffickers and confessed murderers to testify against former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who they all said took millions of dollars in exchange for political protection of their international cocaine shipping operations.
While Hernández was elected president of Honduras in 2014 on the campaign promise of “una vida mejor” — a better life — for country’s 10 million civilians, a string of convicted drug traffickers and confessed killers testified across two weeks of trial in the Southern District of New York that they each paid bribes to Hernández during his two terms as president in exchange for various favors in support of their trans-shipment of tons of cocaine across the small Central American country.
Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, former leader of the Cachiros cartel, testified he paid cash bribes to Hernández with the proceeds of drug trafficking and received protections for his operation: armed military personnel who escorted cattle trucks loaded with cocaine headed north from South America to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico; protection from capture by Honduran law enforcement and extradition to the United States on criminal charges; and government highway contracts for a road construction company used for laundering the cartel’s drug money.
“I would bribe them, sir, with money,” he testified on direct questioning. “From drug trafficking, sir,” he said.
“He did make good on his word to me,” Rivera Maradiaga told the ex-president’s attorney during cross-examination on Thursday morning.
Rivera Maradiaga, a trafficker-turned-DEA informant, said that since 2002 he trafficked over 130 tons of cocaine with the help of Honduran police, military and politicians.
He testified he paid the bribe money to Hernández’s sister in the Honduran capital city of Tegucigalpa.
Rivera Maradiaga said he also paid bribes in the form of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa, in exchange for the same political favors he received from Juan Orlando Hernández.
When Hernández was running for president in 2013, he called Rivera Maradiaga and assured the Cachiros leader: “We could count on him for each thing that [Rivera Maradiaga’s brother] Javier had asked for,” Rivera Maradiaga testified.
He said he met Hernández in early 2014, to ask for his help getting the Honduran government to pay highway contracts it owed his money laundering fronts.
Rivera Maradiaga has admitted to being involved in 78 murders.
Fabio Lobo, the son of former Honduran president Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa testified Thursday he paid bribes to Hernández’s sister Hilda political favors from the Honduran president for information and “logistical support” in aid of the Cachiros’ cocaine trafficking organization, including an armed security detail for the truck shipments of they referred to as “the merchandise”.
The younger Lobo is currently serving a 24-year prison sentence for conspiring to import cocaine. Like several other cooperator witnesses called at this trial, he told prosecutors he hoped that his cooperation and truthful testimony would net him a reduced sentence of time served.
Another drug trafficker affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel testified at trial under the pseudonym “Luis Perez," detailing how shipments of cocaine would leave Colombia and arrive at Puerto Cortés, a port city and municipality on the north Caribbean coast of Honduras, in planes, helicopters, speedboats and maritime shipping containers.
Perez said he paid $1 million to Juan Orlando Hernández’s presidential campaign for inside information about the DEA operations in Honduras.
He testified that 2014, the year Hernández took office, “was one of the most profitable years” for his cocaine trafficking organization.
Earlier in the trial, Alexander Ardon — the former mayor of El Paraíso, Copán, Honduras, and the first cooperating witness called — testified he met several times with then-presidential candidate Hernández to arrange the financing of his election campaign in 2013 with money from cocaine traffickers, including a million dollars in cash from Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
Prosecutors rested their case against Hernández on Monday afternoon, the ninth day of witness testimony.
The 55-year-old former president of Honduras faces up to three terms of life in prison if convicted on a trio of drug and weapons counts: conspiring to manufacture and import cocaine into the United States; using and carrying machine guns and destructive devices during and in furtherance of the cocaine importation conspiracy; and conspiring to use and carry machine guns and destructive devices during and in furtherance of the cocaine importation conspiracy.
Each cooperating witness was asked by prosecutors what type of guns were involved in the cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Cartel gang members carried AK-47 machine guns and sometimes had grenades and rocket launchers, several witnesses testified, while members of the Honduran national police who escorted the drug shipments carried M16 automatic rifles.
Hernández is the first head of state on trial in the United States since former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was ousted by an American invasion in 1989 and served 17 years of a 30-year drug sentence before being extradited to France on money laundering charges.
The trial is being presided over by U.S District Judge Kevin Castel. The George W. Bush appointee also oversaw the case against Hernández’s brother, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and ordered to forfeit $138 million.
When trial kicked off last month, Hernández’s defense attorney Renato Stabile told jurors the key evidence in the government’s case will be testimony from vengeful convicted murderers and drug traffickers who are only testifying to reduce their own prison sentences.
“These are depraved people, these are psychopaths,” he said. “These are not people worthy of your trust and belief.” Stabile called the evidence “smoke and mirrors,” and told jurors to expect “just enough talk to make things seems maybe plausible,” but not sufficient to overcome the prosecution’s burden to prove his client's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
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