TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — U.S. prosecutors announced new charges Thursday linking Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to drug trafficking, raising the pressure on a close ally of the Trump administration.
The Honduran president was not charged. But the indictment alleged that former national police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla oversaw the shipment of tons of cocaine on behalf of Hernández and his brother Tony, a Honduran ex-congressman convicted in U.S. court last year of trafficking cocaine.
The Trump administration has drawn closer to Hernández, who has been receptive to its immigration policies in Central America, even as U.S. justice officials have repeatedly alleged he is connected to narcotics trafficking. During his brother’s federal trial in New York last year, prosecutors said Hernández had received a $1 million bribe in 2013 from Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The conservative Hernández recently concluded an agreement to take in asylum seekers who are turned away at the U.S. border. Trump noted that cooperation last week, when he tweeted that he had promised to send the Honduran president lifesaving ventilators for the country’s covid-19 victims.
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