Former Honduran president sentenced for helping traffickers get cocaine into US

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez (Elmer Martinez/AP)

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez has been sentenced in New York for his conviction on charges that he enabled drug traffickers to use his military and national police force to help get tons of cocaine into the United States.

Judge P Kevin Castel sentenced Hernandez to 45 years in a US prison. A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in his home country.