Former President of Honduras Sentenced to 45 Years in Sweeping Drug Case

During the eight years that Juan Orlando Hernández was president of Honduras, the tiny country was a conduit for hundreds of tons of cocaine that flowed north into the United States.

Mr. Hernández’s political fortunes were tied to the gangs that transported those drugs, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. The traffickers fueled his rise, subsidizing Mr. Hernández’s campaigns in return for promises of protection, even as the two-term president presented himself as a U.S. ally in the war against drugs, prosecutors said.

Now Mr. Hernández will spend 45 years in prison. He was sentenced on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan after being convicted in March of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns.

Judge P. Kevin Castel called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who had masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. He said the sentence would send a message to figures who believed their “fine appearance and elegant manner” might protect them.

“I wish for the victims of the crimes in this case that there is a small degree of closure,” the judge added.

Just before being sentenced, Mr. Hernández spoke for nearly an hour, insisting that he had been the target of a conspiracy.