Ex-President of Honduras Convicted of Drug Crimes
Ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has been found guilty of drug trafficking charges in a federal court in US.
Hernández was convicted on Friday of conspiring to import cocaine into the US, and possessing "destructive devices" including machine guns.
Prosecutors said the ex-president ran Honduras like a "narco-state", protecting and accepting bribes from drug traffickers.
Although Hernández had denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in the case, he now faces life in prison.
Hernández was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, and served for two consecutive terms.
He initially ran as a law-and-order candidate who promised to address the issue of drug-related crime in the country.
Instead, prosecutors accused him of partnering with "some of the world's most prolific narcotics traffickers to build a corrupt and brutally violent empire based on the illegal trafficking of tonnes of cocaine to the United States".
He was extradited to New York and arrested in 2022 to face federal charges in the US.
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