US asks Honduras to arrest, extradite ex-President Hernández

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — After years of speculation in Honduras, the United States formally requested the arrest and extradition of former President Juan Orlando Hernández less than three weeks after he left office.

Honduran security forces surrounded Hernández’s neighborhood 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 Hernández’s legal team from apparently inside his home, attorney Félix Ávila 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 neighborhood, Rasel Tomé, vice president of the newly elected National Congress, said that Hernández had to turn himself in or he would be captured at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

Shortly before that deadline, Hernández 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.”

He said the National Police had already been informed by his lawyers that “I am ready and prepared to cooperate and go voluntarily with their accompaniment in the moment the judge designated by the honorable Supreme Court of Justice decides it, to able to face this situation and defend myself.”

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 a Biden White House targeting Central America’s endemic corruption as a root cause of migration.

The specific charges Hernández’s faces are not known, but federal prosecutors in New...