A brazen attack on an inmate and revelations in a US courtroom have piled pressure on Juan Orlando Hernández over his alleged ties to the narco trade

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

Despite several attempts against his life – poisoned food, a smuggled grenade – drug trafficker Nery López appeared calm as he spoke to the warden inside a maximum-security prison in western Honduras.

He hardly seemed to notice when a guard wearing a ski mask entered the hallway, eyeing López as he reached for the keys on his belt.

Moments later, the masked guard stepped aside from a heavy sliding door as a group of men in T-shirts and shorts burst in, one of them firing a handgun at López.

A second man drew a long knife, hacking at the fallen trafficker before the gunman drew a second weapon and emptied another cartridge of bullets.

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Within hours of the 26 October murder, footage of the brazen attack had leaked on to social media, sending a shockwave of fear through the nation.

The killing came just days after evidence seized from López helped a New York jury convict a former Honduran politician named Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández on four counts of drug trafficking and related weapons charges.

Tony Hernández is the brother of Honduras’s current president, Juan Orlando Hernández – and Lopez’s lawyer was quick to accuse the government of complicity in his client’s murder.

“Juan Orlando [Hernández] silenced him,” said López’s lawyer, Carlos Chajtur. “That door opened on purpose.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nery López is attacked in prison. Photograph: Honduras prison service

The murder is the latest embarrassment for the US state department, which continues to ignore the haze of allegations around the Honduran government while pushing the country to cooperate in Donald Trump’s regional crackdown on migration.

A week before the trial began, the two countries announced an agreement, allowing the US to send asylum seekers from third countries to the violence-torn Central American nation while their claim is processed. Similar deals have been drawn up with Guatemala and El Salvador.

So, while US prosecutors in New York described a situation of “state-sponsored drug trafficking”, the state department has maintained a business-as-usual approach following Tony Hernández’s conviction.

A day after the verdict, the top US diplomat in Honduras was photographed smiling with President Hernández at a military parade.

Casa Presidencial (@Presidencia_HN) En el marco del evento, el Pdte.@JuanOrlandoH compartió con la Encargada de Negocios de los #EEUU acreditada en el país, 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐇𝐨𝐞𝐲, así como la cúpula militar y autoridades de Gobierno. pic.twitter.com/GvNOHNUmps

The Honduran president also featured in the New York case, when prosecutors accused him of having received millions of dollars from drug traffickers, including a $1m bribe from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Prosecutors accused Tony Hernández of conspiring to murder rival traffickers, including a massacre with a bazooka and machine guns that resulted in four deaths.

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President Hernández, who was re-elected in a fraud-marred vote in 2017 after the supreme court lifted a single-term limit, has denied all accusations of links to drug trafficking and maintained his brother’s innocence. “What can you say about a conviction based on the testimonies of confessed murderers?” he said on Twitter after the verdict was announced.

Opposition leaders have called for President Hernández to resign, but fear, division and a dearth of leadership have prevented sporadic protests from coalescing into a mass movement.

At the time of his capture in June 2018, López was living under an assumed name, after faking his own death a few years earlier by paying bribes to obtain a falsified death certificate and a new identity.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An opposition supporter holds signs reading ‘Together we will make history. JOH out’ and ‘Narco-state out’ at a protest in Tegucigalpa Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images

He was considered one of the largest drug traffickers in Honduras, so anti-narcotics agents were intrigued to discover hundreds of pages of records itemizing his business welded in a secret compartment in a vehicle seized in the arrest.

One of those agents testified at the trial of Tony Hernández that he had immediately spotted the former legislator’s name in the ledgers, which also list payments to a person identified as “JOH” – the initials by which President Juan Orlando Hernández is commonly known.

The Honduran government announced it is investigating the murder of Lopéz and has suggested an alternative motive. Deputy security secretary Luis Suazo suggested on Twitter that other traffickers may have had López killed because he was prepared to testify that the ledgers used in the New York trial were fake.

Critics argue that López was murdered to avoid any possibility that he might someday testify in a US court – and to send a message to others who might do the same.

“The first message is for those who are linked to drug trafficking in Honduras to show them that they or their family members will be murdered if they continue providing evidence,” said Dr Joaquín Mejía, a human rights lawyer who has studied violence in Honduras.