Honduras former president Juan Orlando Hernández extradition to U.S. authorized

Honduran authorities detained Hernández final month after the USA requested his extradition to face drug trafficking and weapons fees in federal court docket. That motion shocked Hondurans who had opposed Hernández for years — decrying him as a “narcopresidente” — however believed that the impunity he had loved whereas in workplace would proceed into his retirement.

Even after his arrest, many Hondurans believed Hernández would use his clout to maintain Honduran courts from approving his extradition. That situation apparently has not come to cross. The decide’s ruling, introduced late Wednesday, permits Hernández three days to enchantment, after which he may very well be despatched to the USA instantly. He stays in a Honduran jail.

The Honduran supreme court docket mentioned it authorized Hernández’s extradition on fees of producing, trafficking and distributing illicit substance introduced by prosecutors within the Southern District of New York. The costs additionally included using firearms linked to the trafficking of medication, the supreme court docket mentioned in a press release.

Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was convicted by the U.S. court docket of drug trafficking and weapons fees and sentenced final 12 months to life in jail. Prosecutors named Juan Orlando Hernández an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.

The prosecutors alleged that Juan Orlando Hernández agreed “to facilitate using Honduran armed forces personnel as safety” for drug traffickers. In a separate court docket submitting, witnesses alleged that Hernández mentioned he wished to shove medicine “proper up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the USA with cocaine.

Hernández was a very shut ally of the Trump administration resulting from his willingness to assist cease Central American migrants from reaching the U.S. border.

“President Hernández is working with the USA very intently,” President Donald Trump mentioned in December 2019. “You understand what’s happening on our southern border. And we’re profitable after years and years of shedding.”

Hernández’s spouse, former first girl Ana García Carías, instructed journalists Wednesday she was stunned the USA was trying to prosecute, given his cooperation with Washington.

“I remorse that this occurs to somebody who has been [a U.S.] ally,” she mentioned.

Hernandez, who was barred by time period limits from operating for reelection, had hoped his Nationwide Get together would win the presidential election in November and prolong some safety in opposition to a U.S. prosecution. However the Nationwide Get together suffered a shocking loss to democratic socialist Xiomara Castro, who was inaugurated to succeed him in January.

The Biden administration has expressed hope that Castro’s presidency could lead on a shift away from the corruption that plagued Honduras beneath Hernández and which, administration officers say, led partly to excessive ranges of migration.

Hernández says the USA is counting on false info in its case in opposition to him. He tweeted this 12 months that the claims are primarily based on the accounts of “drug traffickers and confessed assassins who had been extradited by my authorities or needed to flee and hand themselves in to U.S. authorities for concern of being extradited.”