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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Jeff Ernst in New York and David Adam in Miami

Ex-Honduran leader praised by Trump faces trial in US for running ‘narco-state’

man in handcuffs wearing a blue surgical mask escorted by police officers
The former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, center, is taken in handcuffs to a waiting aircraft in Tegucigalpa as he is extradited to the United States on 21 April 2022. Photograph: Elmer Martinez/AP

Five years after he was lavished with praise by Donald Trump for “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened” – and two years after he was extradited in shackles to the US – the former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández is to stand trial in New York on Monday, accused of overseeing a “narco-state” and accepting millions in bribes from drug traffickers, including the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Hernández is the first former head of state to face drug-trafficking charges in the United States since another former US ally, the Panamanian strongman Gen Manuel Noriega, over 30 years ago.

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