While Hernández walks free, the U.S. has taken to extrajudicially executing civilians accused vaguely of being low-level drug runners leaving Venezuela — including, as first reported by The Intercept, striking the same boat twice in September in an apparent war crime known as a “double tap.” Beyond killing at least 80 people this fall, the U.S. is positioning military equipment around Venezuela ostensibly, according to the Trump administration, to dismantle Maduro’s “narco-state.” In a November 16 statement designating the “Cártel de los Soles” — which doesn’t appear to formally exist — as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, Rubio alleged that the cartel “is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary.” The U.S. government countered that the meticulous detail of their workings with Hernández and his brother was itself indicative they had participated in the president’s racket, one that “directed heavily-armed members of the Honduran National Police and Honduran military to protect drug shipments as they transited Honduras.” It was implausible, they argued, to believe that Hernández was oblivious to the conspicuous criminality of his younger brother Tony, already in jail for drug trafficking charges. Over the course of the trial, which reached a fever pitch during his testimony, the former president had been eager to underscore his anti-drug collaboration with Obama and Trump, as well as officials like John Kelly, then head of U.S. Southern Command and later adviser to Trump, who he claimed to have met with “15 to 20 times.” His administration organized U.S. training and funding for the TIGRES, an elite police force later accused of hunting down anti-election fraud protesters at the beginning Hernández’s second term; the Maya Chorti Interagency Task Force, a binational group of soldiers and police charged with stemming drug and migrant flows between Honduras and Guatemala; and the FNAMP, an FBI-trained military unit that was later accused of extrajudicial killings.
Author: Jared Olson, Noah Hurowitz
Published at: 2025-12-01 22:04:16
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