The former chief of the Honduran National Police was sentenced Thursday to 19 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to protect shipments of cocaine destined for the United States.

Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, 64, better known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” was a member of the Honduran National Police for decades before becoming its leader for a year in 2012.

He rose to power by enabling cocaine trafficking on a massive scale and using violence, including murder, to protect the drug trade, prosecutors said in a presentencing brief. They had asked that he be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The sentence in Manhattan federal court was announced by Judge P. Kevin Castel.

In a brief by the defense, attorney Donald Vogelman requested a sentence of 10 years in prison. He wrote that Bonilla Valladares “was not always involved in illegal activities” and that although he admitted his guilt in a drug conspiracy, “he adamantly denies being involved in any murders.”

“From time to time he was involved in the illegal drug trade. He actually did good work in service to his country most of the time. He was a very gifted man who lived a dual life which was unfortunate,” Vogelman said.

The lawyer said his client was in poor health and “will be a marked man” if he survives incarceration and is returned to Honduras.

“He will not go back to criminal activities. That chapter in his life is behind him,” the lawyer said.

In Honduras, retired Honduran National Police commissioner Henry Osorio Canales said the sentence was the latest example of how his country’s institutions were at the service of drug traffickers.

“We had a government that was in criminal hands, which steered the destiny of the people and El Tigre was its armed branch,” he said.

A son of Bonilla Valladares by the same name, Juan Carlos Bonilla, who was in the courtroom Thursday, told Honduras’ HRN radio that his father maintains his innocence and only made a guilty plea because he hopes to one day be free again.

“He told us it was all a political persecution,” the younger Bonilla said. “Today was very difficult to see my father in that situation.” He added that his father would appeal his sentence.

Prosecutors said Bonilla Valladares accepted lucrative bribes for providing armed protection as cocaine was transported across Honduras. They said he directed other corrupt law enforcement officers to protect those shipments and furnished sensitive law enforcement information about pending raids to his co-conspirators.

Prosecutors said that in exchange for bribes paid in drug proceeds, Bonilla Valladares “directed members of the Honduran National Police, who were armed with machine guns, to let cocaine shipments pass through police checkpoints without being inspected or seized.”

“Narco-state”

He was arrested March 9, 2022, after he was labeled by U.S. prosecutors as a co-conspirator of former President Juan Orlando Hernández and the president’s brother Tony Hernández. Prosecutors said prior to his sentencing that the brothers were the “powerful political allies” of Bonilla Valladares.

In June, Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Manhattan federal court after he was convicted in March on drug charges after a two-week trial that was closely followed in his home country.

Hernández, who U.S. federal prosecutors said turned his Central American country into a “narco-state” during his presidency from 2014 to 2022, indicated through his legal team he would appeal his conviction.

Prosecutors said the former president had worked closely with the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most violent criminal organizations. Its founder, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is serving a life sentence in the United States.

Tony Hernández, a former Honduran congressman, was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in 2021 in the same courthouse for his own conviction on drug charges.

In a release, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Valladares “committed the very crimes he was sworn to prevent.”

Anne Milgram, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Bonilla Valladares exploited his position as head of the Honduran National Police to “traffic cocaine to the United States and protect drug traffickers.”