LatinNews Daily - 12 August 2024

Honduras On 1 August a US judge, Peter Kevin Castel, sentenced Juan Carlos Bonilla, known as ‘El Tigre’, the former chief of the Honduran national police (PNH) (2012-2013), to 19 years in prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine into the US. Bonilla, who served in the PNH between 1985 and 2016, was extradited to the US in May 2022 on drug trafficking and weapons offences. His sentencing follows that of former president Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), who was sentenced at the end of June to 45 years in prison for cocaine importation and related weapons offences in relation to the same drug trafficking network. Other members of Hernández’s inner circle have been convicted and sentenced in the US on drug charges. Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, received a life sentence in 2021 while Hernández’s cousin, Mauricio Hernández, was sentenced on 2 July to 15 years in prison. According to a US Department of Justice (DoJ) statement, issued following Bonilla’s extradition in 2022, Bonilla corruptly exploited his position as police chief “to facilitate cocaine trafficking, and used violence, including murder, to protect the particular cell of politically connected drug traffickers he aligned with” including former president Hernández and his brother, Tony.

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