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After years of speculation in Honduras, the United States has formally requested the arrest and extradition of former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, less than three weeks after he left office.
Honduran security forces surrounded Hernandez’s neighbourhood Monday night and the Supreme Court of Justice scheduled an urgent meeting Tuesday morning to select a judge to handle the extradition request. A standoff ensued.
In a video released by Hernandez’s legal team from apparently inside his home, attorney Felix Avila said that everything would have to wait until the Supreme Court designated a judge Tuesday to consider the case.
“Meanwhile, it is understood that no arrest order exists.”
However, at a police barrier to the neighbourhood, Rasel Tome, vice-president of the newly elected National Congress, said that Hernandez had to turn himself in or he would be captured at 6 a.m. Tuesday.
Shortly before that deadline, Hernandez released an audio recording via Twitter early Tuesday thanking those praying for him.
“It is not an easy moment,” he said. “I don’t desire it for anyone.”
‘Ready and prepared to co-operate’
Hernandez said the National Police had already been informed by his lawyers that “I am ready and prepared to co-operate and go voluntarily with their accompaniment in the moment the judge designated by the honourable Supreme Court of Justice decides it, to be able to face this situation and defend myself.”
Attention turned Tuesday to the Supreme Court’s 15 justices. The court’s president, Rolando Argueta, is known to be close to Hernandez. All of the justices were selected to the court by the Congress in 2016, during Hernandez’s first presidential term. They serve seven-year terms.
The majority come from his National Party.
It was a long-awaited fall for a leader reviled in his home country, who enjoyed support from the Trump administration but had been kept at arm’s length by Joe Biden’s White House, which is targeting Central America’s endemic corruption as a root cause of migration.
Honduran national Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez sentenced to life in prison and ordered to forfeit $151.7 million for distributing tons of cocaine and related firearms offenses<a href=”https://t.co/zfzAjhWqNB”>https://t.co/zfzAjhWqNB</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/DEAHQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@DEAHQ</a>
—@SDNYnews
The specific charges Hernandez’s faces are not known, but federal prosecutors in New York had previously named him a co-conspirator while sentencing Honduran Geovanny Fuentes in a drug trafficking case, alleging that Hernandez’s political rise was fuelled with drug profits. Hernandez has long denied any wrongdoing.
Nicole Navas, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment.
Hernandez left office on Jan. 27 with the swearing in of President Xiomara Castro. The same day he was sworn in as Honduras’s representative to the Central American Parliament.
His lawyer, Hermes Ramirez, told local media his client had immunity as a member of the regional parliament and said government forces were not following proper procedures. He said Hernandez was inside the home.
Heavy police presence
Various contingents of the National Police, including special forces, as well as military police were present around Hernandez’s neighbourhood Monday night. Barriers at all of the entrances kept out media and even residents.
Members of the security forces entered the area with weapons, wearing balaclavas and with handcuffs dangling from their ballistic vests. Some neighbours said the house had been dark and they believe unoccupied.
Hernandez often pointed to the fact that Honduras began allowing the extradition of Hondurans on drug trafficking charges while he was president of the congress as part of his defence.
U.S. prosecutors in New York repeatedly implicated him in his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial, alleging that his political rise was fuelled by drug profits. That brother, Juan Antonio (Tony) Hernandez, was sentenced to life in prison on drug and weapons charges in March 2021.
Around midnight Monday, 56-year-old Jorge Arturo Vega, a supporter of President Castro’s Liberty and Refoundation party, stood outside a police barricade at Hernandez’s neighborhood, celebrating.
“This is a party we’ve been waiting a long time for,” Vega said, thinking back over the dozen years since Hernandez came up in the congress.
“We couldn’t stand this drug trafficker, criminal, killer in the presidential house any longer.”
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