Former Honduran president sentenced to 45 years for helping traffickers get tons of cocaine into US

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $8 million for enabling drug traffickers to use his military and national police force to help get tons of cocaine into the United States. The 55-year-old was sentenced in New York on Wednesday after a jury convicted him in March. His two-week trial in federal court was closely followed in his home country. Hernández was arrested at his home in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, three months after leaving office in 2022 and was extradited to the U.S. Prosecutors say Hernández worked with drug traffickers as long ago as 2004, taking millions of dollars in bribes.