Displaying items by tag: drug trafficking

Many Hondurans are celebrating what they see as a rare instance of accountability for corruption among the nation's ruling class. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the country’s former president, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison after being convicted on drug and weapons charges. He had been found guilty by a Manhattan jury in March of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect cocaine shipments destined for the USA, despite his public stance against drug trafficking. Hernandez, who served as president from 2014 to 2022, maintained his innocence at the sentencing, claiming he was wrongfully accused. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, arguing that his actions facilitated large-scale drug trafficking and associated violence. They said he had used drug money to bribe officials and manipulate election results in 2013 and 2017. His brother, Tony Hernandez, was also sentenced to life in prison in 2021 on drug charges.

On 30 April Ecuadorean president Daniel Noboa decreed a state of emergency in five coastal provinces, lasting sixty days, because of ‘internal armed conflict’. The measure marks the second such declaration by Noboa, who took office in November with promises to turn around a deteriorating security situation which has led to a spike in violent deaths and other crimes. The police and armed forces will be deployed in the provinces for ‘tactical combat operations’ against organised armed groups’. The government blames the violence (including the dramatic invasion of a television station and mass hostage-taking of prison guards in January) on drug-trafficking gangs.

A 79-year-old Spanish woman has been arrested in Portugal over suspicions of leading a drug ring. The 78-year-old woman, who was heading a smuggling group, was arrested in Vila Real, in northern Portugal, along with two other Spaniards, aged 26 and 60, as part of an operation carried out by Spanish and Portuguese police. They were bringing in cocaine through Portuguese ports using a legal company importing coral from the Dominican Republic. The woman was the head of the group as well as the manager and owner of the front company. The group was a wholesaler for other traffickers who then sold the cocaine on the black market in southern Spain.

Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, civil wars, and oppressive dictatorships all play a part in the story of Nicaragua. This nation of only 6.3 million people is physically the largest of the Central American republics. As it continues to face unending obstacles, leaving it one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, it also suffers from the ongoing conflict and violence associated with drug trafficking. There is poverty, there are broken families; but the suffering of many Nicaraguans has softened their hearts toward God. They are asking spiritual questions. Evangelicals have grown forty-fold in fifty years! Believers are growing in considerable influence, even in the government, but deep-seated poverty has also opened doors for false teachings such as liberation theology and prosperity gospel. Pray for seekers to be wise and discerning and for false teaching to be revealed for what it is - fake news, not good news.