Farmers protest towards President Donald Trump’s pardon of Honduras’ former President Juan Orlando Hernandez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
Moises Castillo/AP
disguise caption
toggle caption
Moises Castillo/AP
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras Legal professional Normal Johel Zelaya mentioned Monday that he had ordered Honduran authorities and requested Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest order for ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Hernández was launched from federal jail in the USA final week after Trump pardoned him. Hernández had been sentenced in U.S. federal courtroom final yr to 45 years in jail for serving to transfer tons of cocaine to the USA.
Hernández went from supposed U.S. ally within the struggle on medication to the topic of a U.S. extradition request shortly after he left workplace in 2022. He was detained and despatched to the U.S. by present President Xiomara Castro of the social democrat LIBRE celebration.
Zelaya included a photograph of the two-year-old order signed by a Supreme Court docket Justice of the Peace for alleged fraud and cash laundering costs. The order says that it have to be executed “in the case that the accused is freed by United States authorities.”
Dozens of Honduran officers and politicians had been implicated within the so-called Pandora case wherein Honduran prosecutors alleged authorities funds had been diverted via a community on nongovernmental organizations to political events, together with Hernández’s 2013 presidential marketing campaign.
A lawyer for Hernández, Renato Stabile, mentioned in an e-mail 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.”
A display screen exhibits former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who revealed a message on TikTok thanking U.S. President Donald Trump for pardoning him, at a espresso store in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025.
Moises Castillo/AP
disguise caption
toggle caption
Moises Castillo/AP
Zelaya had mentioned after Trump introduced his intention to pardon Hernández that his workplace must take motion to finish impunity.
Hernández’s spouse mentioned after his launch that the previous president was in an undisclosed location for his security.
The drama comes whereas Honduras remains to be ready to search out out who its subsequent president shall be.
Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura, a former Tegucigalpa mayor from Hernández’s conservative Nationwide Occasion. Asfura was main Salvador Nasralla, additionally a conservative from the Liberal Occasion, by barely a share level because the vote depend slowly superior.
An Asfura victory may doubtlessly easy the way in which for Hernández’s eventual return to Honduras. Nasralla has made preventing corruption the centerpiece of his marketing campaign and has mentioned Hernández stole the 2017 election from him in a vote that was stuffed with irregularities.
Hernández all the time denied any wrongdoing whereas in workplace and insisted he was among the many strongest antidrug allies of the USA.
Trump had introduced his intention to pardon Hernández simply days earlier than Honduras’ nationwide elections, throwing a brand new aspect into an in depth contest. Whereas some Hondurans stay nostalgic for Hernández’s two phrases in workplace, many had been shocked {that a} man convicted of drug trafficking in a intently watched trial may all of a sudden be launched early in his sentence.
Trump mentioned Hondurans had requested the pardon for Hernández and that after taking a look at his case he determined Hernández had been unfairly handled by prosecutors.
