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The US government requested this Monday from Honduras the extradition of former president Juan Orlando Hernández, designated by the justice of that country for drug trafficking.
Previously, the Honduran Foreign Ministry had said on Twitter that it had notified the country’s Supreme Court of Justice that the United States Embassy had formally requested the arrest of a Honduran politician for extradition purposes.
The ministry did not identify the politician, but several media outlets, including CNN, confirmed that it was the former president, who ruled the country between 2014 and 2022.
The Supreme Court called an emergency session on Tuesday to appoint a judge to review the request.
Local television images showed a police cordon and numerous people celebrating near Hernández’s residence in the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Monday night.
“(I want) to make clear the outrage that my client Juan Orlando Hernández is facing,” lawyer Hermes Ramírez told a local television station, in relation to the presence of uniformed men near the residence.
Ramírez said that the former president was at his residence.
Hernández has previously denied the accusations against him and assures that during his government he fought drug trafficking.
Last week, the United States announced that it had sanctioned the former president by vetoing him from entering the country.
Juan Orlando Hernández joined the Central American Parliament after leaving the presidency, which, according to his lawyer, guarantees him immunity.
Parlacen grants its members immunity from prosecution in Central America, although that protection can be removed or suspended if requested by a member’s home country.
a controversial figure
image source, EPA
Hernández ruled Honduras for eight years, although the country’s constitution does not allow presidential re-election.
However, a ruling by the Supreme Court, with an official majority, authorized him to run for a second term in 2017.
That choice was not without controversy. After the vote-counting system stopped working, Hernández began to gain an advantage in the voting and was declared the winner, sparking massive protests that left several dead.
Although the US government recognized its victory, US prosecutors later revealed that they had opened an investigation into President Hernández, whom they identified as a co-conspirator in the trial of his brother, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2021.
One of the witnesses in the case was a former accountant of a Honduran rice factory who said he had seen how the current president received briefcases with drug money, with which he sought to associate with a cocaine laboratory and spoke quietly about “the protection and transfer of drugs”.
When in the trial of his brother and that of the Honduran Geovanny Fuentes, testimonies emerged that compromised him, the then president rejected them as coming from criminals who wanted to take revenge for their actions against drug trafficking and reduce their own sentences in the US.
“Any narrative about the battle against drug trafficking in Honduras that omits the unprecedented reduction of 95% (official US data) that we achieved, is generally just a vehicle for dramatic headlines to promote the false testimony of the narcos that we defeated,” he tweeted. Hernandez at the time.
Since taking office in 2014, the former Honduran president, known by his initials JOH, has sought to portray himself as an ally of Washington on security and migration issues.
For years, the US backed the Honduran president despite accusations of government corruption and human rights abuses by security forces.
During the Trump administration, Washington sent millions of dollars in aid to Honduras.
After his controversial re-election, Hernández decided not to renew in 2020 the mandate of the Support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, an organization created with the support of the US and the OAS that investigated dozens of Honduran government officials .
However, Hernández’s relations with Washington began to cool down with the arrival at the White House of Democrat Joe Biden, who has promoted an agenda to combat corruption in Central America.
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