TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez mentioned Tuesday he’s prepared to collaborate with nationwide police, hours after authorities surrounded his home amid U.S. authorities requests that he be arrested and extradited to Washington.
Speculation had been swirling for months that the United States was planning to request Hernandez’s extradition when he left workplace amid accusations that he colluded with drug traffickers. Leftist chief Xiomara Castro changed him as president final month.
Honduras’ Supreme Court – which can resolve on the extradition request – is due to meet at 9:30 a.m. (1500 GMT) on Tuesday to identify a decide to oversee the case, a judiciary spokesman mentioned.
Hernandez had been holed up in his home, in accordance to one among his legal professionals, after about 100 police officers surrounded it late on Monday.
“The nationwide police, by means of my proxies, have already acquired the message that I’m prepared to collaborate and voluntarily arrive with their accompaniment, for the time being the decide appointed by the honorable Supreme Court of Justice decides, so as to face this example and defend myself,” Hernandez mentioned in a message shared on Twitter.
Just a couple of hours after leaving workplace, Hernandez joined the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), a six-country regional physique which affords its members immunity from prosecution.
However, any immunity bestowed by Parlacen, which includes elected officers in addition to former presidents and vice-presidents, might be eliminated or suspended on the request of a member’s home nation.
A lawyer for Hernandez, Felix Avila, advised a neighborhood TV channel that if a Supreme Court decide orders his consumer’s arrest, the previous president “has mentioned that if he’s allowed, he’s willing to surrender voluntarily.”
A senior Honduran official, talking anonymously as a result of they weren’t allowed to converse to media on the topic, advised Reuters on Monday the United States “requested the provisional arrest of former president Juan Orlando Hernandez for extradition functions”.
Washington’s request for extradition is a stark distinction to a interval when the U.S. authorities noticed Hernandez as an important ally within the risky Central America area throughout his eight years in energy.
The United States had already positioned Hernandez on a blacklist, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month mentioned there have been credible studies Hernandez “has engaged in important corruption by committing or facilitating acts of corruption and narco-trafficking”.
(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia, writing by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Raissa Kasolowsky)
