‘Divine justice’: How Hondurans are reacting to an ex-president’s US trial | Courts News

New York Metropolis, United States – Bundled in opposition to 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 apart from former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who — after styling himself as a tough-on-crime conservative — now faces drugs and weapons fees.

Prosecutors accuse him of operating a “corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy” whereas in workplace, during which he accepted tens of millions of {dollars} in trade for facilitating cocaine shipments to the US.

The trial has captured public attention inside Honduras and its diaspora, with observers like Alfaro seeing the hearings as a referendum on Hernández’s two phrases as president.

“There’s a lot proof in opposition to” Hernández, Alfaro advised Al Jazeera after making it previous the tight safety contained in the Southern District Courtroom 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 folks suffered a lot in Honduras,” Alfaro mentioned. “There’s going to be justice, divine justice.”

Hernandez’s divisive legacy

The trial is without doubt one of the most consequential in years for Hondurans, because it weighs the legacy of one of many nation’s most divisive figures in latest historical past.

“The good majority” of Hondurans, radio journalist Pablo Zapata advised Al Jazeera, “are actually on the sting 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 goes by way of one of the tough durations in the case of safety,” Hernández mentioned in his inauguration speech. On the time, the nation confronted excessive charges of crimes linked to drug trafficking.

Hernández pledged to deal with the issue by way of “mano dura” — or “iron fist” — insurance policies. That included the deployment of navy forces to the streets. “The celebration is over for criminals,” he introduced.

Nevertheless it didn’t take lengthy for accusations of corruption and human rights abuses to pile up in opposition to 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 courtroom this week, US prosecutors described Hernández as a pacesetter 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 guilty, and his attorneys argued this week that he, actually, 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 they’d exaggerated or lied in trade for decreased sentences.

“You’re going to listen to from loads of devils,” Stabile mentioned.

Critics questions former US assist

In the meantime, the US Justice Division, beneath President Joe Biden, has taken a powerful stance in opposition to Hernández, formally labelling him a “corrupt and undemocratic actor”.

In February 2022, simply weeks after he left workplace, Hernández was arrested at his residence within the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa. Two months later, the previous president was extradited to the US to face fees.

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 courtroom 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 intensive, 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 in the course of the Chilly Warfare.

In 2009, Honduras skilled a navy coup d’état that resulted in Hernández’s conservative Nationwide Occasion taking again energy. The US briefly suspended support 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 struggle” and stemming in opposition to northbound migration. Beneath presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the US despatched Honduras tens of millions of {dollars} in navy and safety help.

All of the whereas, Spring advised Al Jazeera, Hernández was allegedly utilizing navy and police forces to guard drug traffickers.

She is a part of “Placing the US and Canada On Trial”, a campaign scheduled to coincide with Hernández’s courtroom case that seeks accountability for crimes dedicated in Honduras.

“The US and Canadian governments ignored warning indicators that JOH was concerned in organised crime for years,” Spring mentioned.

“As an alternative, each international locations continued to politically assist JOH, describing him as a drug struggle ally, all whereas he trafficked narcotics utilizing Honduran state safety forces beneath his command.”

Issues persist into the current

Different activists and journalists see Hernández’s trial as a mirror for ongoing struggles inside the Central American nation.

José Luis Guillén, a TV journalist for TeleCeiba and Radio America, mentioned the trial has generated intense scrutiny throughout all sectors of society, with high-profile witnesses anticipated to be known as.

“It’s being talked about all over the place [in Honduras], not simply within the authorities,” Guillén mentioned of the trial. “As a result of it might implicate TV channels, enterprise pursuits, gangs. It’s a each day dialog.”

Some critics have already singled out the Honduran information media’s function within the scandal.

Cristián Sánchez, a impartial journalist residing in Washington, DC, helps run the Professional-Honduras Community, a civil society organisation specialising in exposing corruption.

He mentioned that, whereas the widespread press protection of Hernández’s trial is welcome, it comes after years of silence from media shops that didn’t cowl Hernández’s excesses. Some, he believes, could have been purchased off.

“For years, it was prohibited to speak about Hernández in Honduras — above all, on company channels,” Sánchez mentioned. “Juan Orlando financed many of those journalists to the tune of tens of millions of {dollars} in order that they wouldn’t speak about him.”

Sánchez was fast so as to add, nonetheless, that the violence and human rights abuses that existed beneath 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 this moment.

These networks “embrace bankers, politicians, and businessmen”, he advised Al Jazeera in Tocoa, a part of a area in Honduras the place at the least a dozen land and water defenders have been assassinated or forcibly disappeared over the previous yr.

Nonetheless, Rivas thinks Hernández’s trial will shine a lightweight on the disgraced president’s legacy.

“The extent of impunity that Juan Orlando generated, and the facility he achieved by way of his allies, proceed creating situations of violence in Honduras. We’re nonetheless going to maintain struggling violence right here.”