Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández has been found guilty on charges relating to drug trafficking and weapons possession in a federal jury trial in New York (article available here).
The verdict was announced during the second day of deliberations, after a two-week trial.
Hernández served as a Honduran congressman, congress leader and finally two-term president. He was arrested in February 2022, only weeks after he finished his second presidential term.
A New York Federal District Court convicted the 55-year-old ex-president Friday of three counts including conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and to use machine guns and "destructive devices."
It is one of the rare instances a former leader of a country has been tried and convicted in the U.S. on drug related charges. A prominent previous example was Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega, who was convicted in 1992 in a federal court in Florida of allowing a Colombian cartel to ship cocaine through Panama to the U.S.