During the trial against the former President of the Republic, Juan Orlando Hernández, which is being held in New York in the United States, for crimes related to drug trafficking, the name of Guatemala came up this week.
One of the strongest witnesses in the case appears to be a former Honduran mayor and drug trafficker who was extradited to the United States and is now a special witness in the conviction of Hernández.
Amílcar Alexander Ardón was already key in the trial against Hernandez’s brother, Tony, and in his testimony he has linked about 20 other people to drug trafficking actions, according to the Honduran newspaper La Prensa.
In one of his recent testimonies in the New York court, Ardón pointed out that the Sinaloa cartel, commanded by the also extradited Mexican kingpin Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, moved tons of drugs from South America to the United States on Honduran soil, since 2009. , of which he was coordinator.
On a map of Central America in court, he was asked to point out the borders of Honduras, which he identified as Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to a La Prensa transcript.
He admitted that his crimes were being a drug gang leader, weapons, homicides and drug trafficking, and during his testimonies he described how he was protected by Honduran authorities.
He pointed out that to move at least 250 tons of drugs he had collaborators and offensive weapons such as AR-15, M-16, 9mm, AK-47, and even “bazookas to destroy cars,” according to the Honduran newspaper.
Ardón said that they sometimes blew up armored vehicles with bazookas in the mountainous areas between Guatemala and Honduras.
Guatemalans mentioned
In his testimonies, Ardón has also mentioned some Guatemalans. To questions from the prosecution, he responded that cousins Ronald Enrique Salguero Portillo and Otto René Salguero Morales, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in New York in October 2022, were cocaine suppliers to the Sinaloa cartel.
The prosecutor also asked him about Jairo el Pelón Orellana Morales, who is said to have been a key member of the Zetas in Guatemala and was captured in Zacapa in 2014. Ardón said that the only thing he knew was that he was in a US prison. USA
According to another La Prensa article, Ardón, former mayor of a town in Copán, also mentioned in his testimony the Guatemalan Mario Ponce, captured in Honduras and later extradited to the United States, as a key player in the expansion of the Sinaloa cartel in the region.
Ponce was sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking, according to a sentence issued by the Southern District Court of Florida, United States.
In 2015, several of the drug trafficker’s farms came under the control of the State of Guatemala, most of which were in Playitas, Morales, Izabal, one of his operations centers for drug trafficking.
Who is Ardon?
Alexander Ardón was mayor of El Paraíso, a municipality in the Honduran department of Copán since 2000.
He was the second witness presented by the Prosecutor’s Office in the trial underway in New York against Juan Orlando Hernández.
According to El Heraldo, from Honduras, together with his brother, Hugo Ardón, he formed the Honduran Hermanos AA cartel, who controlled drug routes in the towns of Copán and Ocotepeque.
Ardón surrendered to US justice in 2018, after having negotiated the process with the Anti-Drug Department of that country.
He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, in an agreement to reduce his sentence.
As part of the negotiations with justice, Ardón agreed to be a special witness in the case of the Hernández brothers, also accused by the United States.
#Witness #Juan #Orlando #Hernandez #drugs #guarded #bazookas #AK47 #Diario #Página
