NEWS: HONDURAS
The United States is seeking the extradition of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The Hon­duran For­eign Min­istry said Mon­day via Twit­ter that it had noti­fied the coun­try’s Supreme Court that the U.S. Embassy had request­ed the “offi­cial pro­vi­sion­al arrest of a Hon­duran politi­cian” for extradition.

The min­istry did not iden­ti­fy the politi­cian, but Hon­duran Vice Pres­i­dent Sal­vador Nas­ral­la con­firmed to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that the request named Hernandez.

On Mon­day, dozens of police offi­cers sur­round­ed Her­nan­dez’s home, Reuters news agency reports.

Images of a doc­u­ment, which showed a “for­mal request for pro­vi­sion­al arrest for the pur­pose of extra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca of Juan Orlan­do Her­nan­dez Alvara­do,” were also released by CNN.

Nicole Navas, spokesper­son for the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, declined to com­ment. The U.S. State Depart­ment has yet to comment.

Last week, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken said Her­nan­dez was on a list last year of peo­ple accused of cor­rup­tion or under­min­ing democ­ra­cy in El Sal­vador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“The U.S. is advanc­ing trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca by mak­ing pub­lic the visa restric­tions against for­mer Hon­duran Pres­i­dent Juan Orlan­do Her­nan­dez due to acts of cor­rup­tion,” Blinken said on Twit­ter Feb. 7. “No one is above the law. ”

Her­nan­dez left office on Jan. 27 with the swear­ing in of Pres­i­dent Xiomara Cas­tro. On the same day, Her­nan­dez was sworn in as a Hon­duran rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Parliament.

With a weak and co-opt­ed Hon­duran judi­cial sys­tem, Hon­durans’ hope for jus­tice had for years rest­ed with U.S. fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York, where a series of rev­e­la­tions against Her­nan­dez were close­ly fol­lowed at home.

Spec­u­la­tion had cir­cu­lat­ed for months about whether Her­nan­dez would be charged once he was no longer pres­i­dent, as U.S. pros­e­cu­tors in New York repeat­ed­ly impli­cat­ed him in his broth­er’s 2019 drug tri­al, alleg­ing that his polit­i­cal rise was fueled by drug profits.

Her­nan­dez has denied all charges and says the accu­sa­tions are part of a revenge plot by the same drug lords his gov­ern­ment cap­tured or extra­dit­ed to the Unit­ed States.

His broth­er, for­mer Hon­duran Con­gress­man Tony Her­nan­dez, was sen­tenced in March 2017 to life in the Unit­ed States for drug trafficking.