Honduras’ attorney general is calling for the arrest of former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez said Monday that he ordered Honduran authorities and asked Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest order against Hernández for alleged fraud and money laundering charges. Hernandez, who in 2024 was sentenced to 45 years for allegedly helping to move tons of cocaine into the U.S., was released from federal prison in the U.S. a week ago.
“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by the criminal networks that have deeply marked the life of our country,” Zelaya said, according to a translation of a post he wrote on X.
Zelaya included a photo of the two-year-old order signed by a Honduras Supreme Court magistrate that says that it must be executed “in the case that the accused is freed by United States authorities.”
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Dozens of Honduran officials and politicians were implicated in the so-called Pandora case in which Honduran prosecutors alleged government funds were diverted through a network of nongovernmental organizations to political parties, including Hernández’s 2013 presidential campaign, according to The Associated Press.
Hernández went from supposed U.S. ally in the war on drugs to the subject of a U.S. extradition request shortly after he left office in 2022, the AP added. He was detained and sent to the U.S. by current President Xiomara Castro of the social democrat LIBRE party.
A lawyer for Hernández, Renato Stabile, told the AP in an email that, “This is obviously a strictly political move on behalf of the defeated Libre party to try to intimidate President Hernandez as they are being kicked out of power in Honduras. It is shameful and a desperate piece of political theatre and these charges are completely baseless.”
Hernández was freed after Trump announced he was issuing him a “full and complete pardon” following his conviction of conspiring with drug traffickers to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
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Trump said Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly,” implying that his trial was politically motivated or over-prosecuted.
Hernández was convicted in New York on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S. and two related weapons offenses after a two-week trial.
Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who teamed up with American authorities under three U.S. presidential administrations to reduce drug imports, according to the AP. But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernández employed “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader while he deployed his nation’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade.
Hernández later thanked Trump for pardoning him, writing on social media that he was “wrongfully convicted.”
“My profound gratitude goes to President @realDonaldTrump for having the courage to defend justice at a moment when a weaponized system refused to acknowledge the truth. You reviewed the facts, recognized the injustice, and acted with conviction. You changed my life, sir, and I will never forget it,” Hernández wrote on X.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley Carnahan, Michael Dorgan, Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
