By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC-Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN NY Mag
SDNY COURTHOUSES, April 21 - When Tony Hernandez of Honduras had been put on trial and the name of his brother Juan Orlando surfaced, it was the beginning of the end. But the process had been slow.
JOH had been propped up for second term, including by a UN team sent down to Tegucigalpa to make the theft of an election with drug money seem normal. If the UN of Antonio Guterres had his way, JOH would still be in power. But as on Ukraine, the UN's actual impact on most of the world is small and getting smaller.
When Giovanny Fuentes Ramirez followed Tony to trial, the mentions of JOH got more frequent, and more pungent. He was quoted about sticking drugs "up the noses of the gringos."
Meetings were described: suitcases of case in exchange for protection of drug routes from the military. Even the delivery of $1 million from El Chapo, using fake TV news trucks.
There was of course fake news in Honduras, some backing up the Hernandez and other narco dynasties. There were even more obscure Honduras case in the SDNY, like that of Fredy Renan Najera, with only one reporter in the gallery, in the second courthouse with only one elevator working. But even as JOH's extradition grew near, many media ignored it or ignored the slow lead up, the stations of the cross.
Finally the day had come. JOH in a blue parka being led in handcuffs to the helicopter, then put on the DEA plane. He must still have been in the air, or on stop-over in Florida, when DOJ and the DEA scheduled a press conference in Washington.
It was strange, because Juan Orlando Hernandez would be prosecuted in the Southern District of New York, and presumably housed in the MDC in Brooklyn.
But Merrick Garland used the JOH press conference to speak about COVID masks and Ukraine. The UN was failing on that, too, but at least was now having to answer some questions. On Honduras, nothing. So what might JOH's arraignment, pre-trial proceedings and final showdown for life sentence before Judge Castel come to reveal?
The first step would be the presentment, set for the SDNY Magistrates Court before Magistrate Judge Aaron. JOH had hired a lawyer, Raymond L. Colon who had moved his office from lower Broadway up to Pugsley Avenue in The Bronx. But he put in a consent to proceed by telephone - why? Watch this site.
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