Belizean drug trafficker sentenced to 33 years behind bars

A Belizean drug trafficker has been sentenced to spend the next three decades behind bars in the United States. According to international news reports, on Thursday, New York district court judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ordered that thirty-six year old Robert Hertular be locked up for the next thirty-three years and four months and pay a fine of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Last March a jury found Hertular guilty of threatening to kill a Belize based D.E.A. agent as well as conspiracy to import cocaine. The offences, which occurred in 2001, involved the seizure of over a ton of Colombian coke. Hertular was arrested in Belize in January 2004 and later extradited to the United States for trial.