Sin categoría
They reject the request of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández for a new trial in New York
A federal judge in New York rejected on Thursday the motion presented by former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, between 2014 and 2022, to make a new trial, after finding him guilty in March of conspiracy and drug trafficking while in office.
Hernández used the alleged trough that DEA analyst Jennifer Taul lied in the criminal trial in which she was blamed for working with cartel-backed drug traffickers to transport cocaine through Honduras destined mainly to the United States.
Taul defended in the trial that cocaine trafficking through Honduras increased during Hernández’s two periods, while the former president argued that it actually decreased using as a source a professor from Trinity College who assured that the amount of this drug from Honduras to the United States had fallen by 82% during his government.
The federal district judge P. Kevin Castel questioned that claim and clarified that Hernández was convicted of conspiring with drug traffickers “regardless of whether the total cocaine trafficking in Honduras increased or decreased” while he was president.
“The evidence that cocaine trafficking through Honduras as a whole decreased during the Hernández administration would only be relevant to demonstrate that Hernández promulgated anti-narcotic policies,” he said.
In his motion, Hernández alleged that Manhattan (New York) was not the right place to judge his case, but the South district of Florida for landing for the first time in Fort Lauderdale after being sent from Tegucigalpa (Honduras).
Castel also dismissed this thesis, with the explanation that the time that Hernández spent in South Florida was equivalent to a half-hour stopover en route to a New York airport, who knew the stop and who never before opposed the chosen place.
During the trial against Hernández, the Prosecutor’s Office presented as main witnesses drug traffickers from Honduras who are serving sentence in the United States after reaching an agreement with the authorities for the reduction of his sentence, as well as the DEA agent.
“The accused accepted millions of dollars in bribes from his drug trafficking partners and, in return, he protected his drugs with all the power of the State, including the Honduran police, the military and judicial system,” the Prosecutor’s Office explained during the process.
His sentence is scheduled for June 26 and faces life imprisonment.
International
Electoral abstention, the route to which the majority opposition in Venezuela clung again
The majority opposition of Venezuela resumed the route of abstention by deciding not to participate in the regional and legislative elections of last May 25, as it did 20 years ago, when it withdrew from the contest to elect deputies, although this time in a scenario in which it questions the legitimacy of President Nicolás Maduro.
“When the adversary withdraws from the field, from the field, one advances and takes the ground and exercises it,” Maduro said after the votes a week ago, in which only a group of opponents participated who ignored the guideline of the anti-Chavista majority, sheltered by the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), headed by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia.
Maduro brought up what happened in 2005, when, he said, the opposition called for “total abstention.”
“And well,” added the Chavista leader, “they gave us the National Assembly (AN, Parliament) and the National Assembly 2005-2010 was the most fruitful there was.”
20 years ago, Chavismo took the 167 seats of Parliament before the complete withdrawal of the main opposition parties, which expressed distrust in the voting system.
This time, the PUD refused to attend these elections by denouncing fraud in the presidential elections of July last year, in which the National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed the victory of the president, of which the disaggregated results have not yet been disseminated. The anti-chavismo insists that the winner was its candidate, González Urrutia.
Machado and González Urrutia see the abstention of May 25 as an “act of dignity”.
The former deputy considered the abstention as a fourth “victory” of the opposition, after the 2023 primaries, of which she described as “crushing” the election of González Urrutia as – she said – “president” in 2024 and of the so-called ‘Operation Guacamaya’, in allusion to the departure from the country this month of five anti-Chavistas who were refugees, since March last year, in the residence of the Argentine Embassy in Caracas.
Despite the majority call, an opposition group detached itself from the PUD and ran in the May 25 votes, in which it achieved 11 deputies to Parliament compared to 253 of 285 with which the ruling party remained.
In this regard, the political scientist and deputy director of the Gumilla Center, Piero Trepiccione, told EFE that the 2005-2025 scenarios are “very different.”
“At that time, the forces that politically supported those in power in Venezuela had a lot of popular support, they controlled Venezuelan public opinion, they had superior support, even 60%, the polarization environment was much greater, more tense, harder,” he described.
In his opinion, the country was in the process of consolidating the “hyper-leadership” of then-President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) and the opposition “was trying to understand that dynamic, those new power dynamics that emerged in the country from 1999, with the electoral victory of Hugo Chávez”.
“Of course,” said this expert, “that it was a decision that (with) time proved to be a mistake, because it was effectively not possible to obtain a minimum participation that would have been important at that time and that would have served as a tribune for the necessary institutional counterweights.”
And that wasn’t the only time. Anti-Chavism also withdrew from the 2018 presidential elections and the 2020 parliamentary elections, with which the ruling party regained the majority of the House after having lost it in 2015.
For the five-year period 2026-2031, Chavismo ensured, in addition to the parliamentary majority, 23 of 24 governors in the country.
Trepiccione considers that the majority anti-Chavism has, in terms of leadership, a “great reference” in the figure of Machado, but “it has again fallen into a rather serious process of fragmentation and dispersion.”
Therefore, he believes that a process of reorganization, restructuring and reunion is necessary “in terms of recovering positioning in the territory” and taking advantage of “those great expectations that there are in the country”.
“If the opposition manages to articulate forces, realign itself with that desire for change, give political directionality to that desire for change; without a doubt, it can quickly become an important counterweight in the political process that is being lived in the country,” he added.
The political scientist clarifies that the discussion must go beyond an election. “Here the issue is how to unify a strategy, how to build a joint strategy and how not to fall into the provocation of fragmentation,” he reflected.
Sin categoría
Pope Francis donated Popemobile transformed into mobile clinic for Gaza’s children
Before his death, Pope Francis donated one of his popemobiles to be converted into a mobile medical unit for children in Gaza, officials confirmed on Monday.
The Jerusalem and Sweden branches of Caritas, the Vatican’s charitable federation, released photos of the repurposed vehicle on Monday. However, there is no set date yet for when it will be operational. The donation was announced the same day Israel approved plans to take over the Gaza Strip and remain in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified period.
“When the humanitarian corridor to Gaza reopens, it will be ready to provide primary medical care to children in Gaza,” Caritas Jerusalem said in a statement.
The mobile clinic will be outfitted with diagnostic, examination, and treatment supplies, including testing equipment, suture kits, syringes and needles, oxygen supplies, vaccines, and a medical-grade refrigerator, according to Caritas.
International
India asks to identify Pakistani citizens in the country to ensure their departure before Sunday
The Indian government asked regional executives on Friday to identify all Pakistani citizens in their territories to ensure that they leave India once the deadline granted by the authorities to leave expires on April 27.
This measure was transmitted today to the heads of government of the different Indian states by the Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, according to official sources cited by several media in the country.
Pakistani citizens must leave the country before April 27, following the order issued yesterday by the Indian Government, in which it indicated that all visas issued to nationals of the neighboring country will be revoked from that moment on.
He only made an exception with medical visa holders, to whom he granted until April 29 to leave India.
The order has increased transit at the only land crossing between India and Pakistan, known as the Attari-Wagah border, to where Pakistani citizens have traveled today to leave the country.
The suspension of visas is part of a series of measures ordered last Wednesday by New Delhi, in response to the terrorist attack perpetrated the day earlier in Indian-run Kashmir, in which 26 people died.
The Indian government said it had indications that the attackers had the support of Pakistan, which New Delhi accuses of sponsoring the insurgency in Kashmir, which has caused a serious diplomatic crisis between the two nations.
In response to India’s measures, Pakistan suspended some visas for Indians and closed its side of the border – in reciprocity with New Delhi. It also closed its airspace to Indian airlines and announced the suspension of all bilateral agreements with India.
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