The United States has asked Honduras for the extradition of ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who left power last month and who is suspected by Washington of drug trafficking, an official source told AFP on Monday. .
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On Twitter, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Honduras indicated that it had delivered to the Supreme Court of the country an “official communication from the Embassy of the United States” formally requesting the arrest of a “Honduran politician” for the purpose of extradition. , but without specifying the name of this person.
The CNN channel showed on the air this document from the ministry, which does indeed request “the provisional arrest for the purposes of extradition to the United States of America of Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado”.
The Supreme Court will meet urgently on Tuesday to appoint a judge to examine this request, AFP learned from an official source.
An important security device was visible in the night from Monday to Tuesday around his residence in the district of San Ignacio, in Tegucigalpa.
Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Hermes Ramirez, considered that this police deployment, which according to him prevented the advisers of the former president from accessing his home, constituted an “attack” on the rights of his client.
For the moment, no arrest warrant has been notified and no judge appointed to examine the case, denounced Mr. Ramirez on the television channel TN5.
Mr. Hernandez, 53, usually referred to by his initials JOH, left power on January 27 after serving two terms as head of Honduras since 2014.
His younger brother and former deputy, Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, was sentenced in March 2021 in the United States to life in prison for drug trafficking. New York prosecutors suspect JOH of being his accomplice.
“The nostrils of the gringos”
Another of the relatives of the former head of state, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, was also sentenced to life last week for drug trafficking by the federal court in Manhattan, New York.
During the trial, prosecutors accused JOH of helping the defendant smuggle cocaine into the United States. Mr. Fuentes Ramirez himself claimed during the hearing that President Hernandez told him that they were going to “put the drugs in the nostrils of the gringos” without them even realizing it.
So far, however, no formal charges have been filed against JOH. The former head of state rejected all the charges, which he described as “revenge”, claiming to have arrested and delivered numerous drug traffickers to the United States.
In Honduras, JOH is also accused by his political opponents of corruption in the context of infrastructure and supply contracts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, revealed on February 7 that Mr. Hernandez appeared, since July 1, 2021, on a list of people accused by the United States of corruption or attacks on democracy in Central America. .
JOH has “committed or facilitated acts of corruption and drug trafficking, and used proceeds from these illicit activities for political campaigns,” Blinken said in a statement.
Mr. Hernandez, replaced last month in the presidency by his political rival Xiomara Castro, has since been an ex officio member of the Central American Parliament, a privilege enjoyed by all former heads of state in the region after leaving power.
According to his lawyer, this function gives him immunity.
A month before the November election, JOH had surprised everyone by signing a border agreement with his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega during a whirlwind visit to Managua that had aroused suspicion.
MM. Hernandez and Ortega maintain good relations, and Nicaragua is a country where Central American politicians sought refuge frequently. Two former Salvadoran presidents – Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) and Salvador Sanchez (2014-2019) – even obtained Nicaraguan nationality, thus protecting them from any extradition to their country or to the United States.