Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to drug charges in the United States, with his lawyer complaining that he is being held like a “prisoner of war” in a New York federal jail.
Hernandez, 53, appeared in US federal court on Tuesday with chains around his ankles and spoke through a Spanish interpreter saying he was not guilty. He was extradited to the US last month and charged with participating in a “corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States”. The ex-president, who served two terms between 2014 and January 2022, has maintained that he is innocent. He lost his immunity from prosecution when he handed power over to Honduras’s first female president, Xiomara Castro, in January.
Defence lawyer Raymond Colon said on Tuesday that Hernandez was held in solitary confinement and had not been allowed to call his family. “Obviously, he’s been treated like a prisoner of war, not like every other inmate,” Colon said.
Credit: Aljazeera.com
