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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.

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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.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.