Honduras’s attorney general issued an international arrest warrant for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after he was pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Honduran Attorney General Johel Zelaya posted a picture of the international arrest warrant on X along with a statement affirming his commitment to fighting corruption.
“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by the criminal networks that have deeply marked the life of our country,” he began.
“That is why, on the occasion of the International Day Against Corruption, which is commemorated tomorrow, December 9, I inform the Honduran people that I have instructed the [Technical Criminal Investigation Agency] and also urge the State security agencies and our international allies, such as INTERPOL, to execute the international arrest warrant against former president Juan Orlando Hernández, accused of the crimes of money laundering and fraud in the Pandora II case,” Zelaya added.
He said a separate arrest of someone else involved in the corruption case had already been made.
“Our commitment is to the truth and to justice, as I promised on my first day at the helm of this institution,” Zelaya concluded.
Hernandez served as president from 2014 to 2022 and was arrested shortly after leaving office. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison under former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for conspiring to traffic over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Trump claimed that the prosecution was politically motivated.
“Well, I was told — I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup,” Trump told reporters. “He was the president of the country. And they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country.”
FORMER HONDURAN PRESIDENT RELEASED FROM PRISON AFTER TRUMP PARDON
Hernandez was extradited to the U.S. the same year he was arrested, in 2022. He was convicted in March 2024 after a jury trial and sentenced in June 2024. He was released from the high-security prison USP Hazelton in Preston County, West Virginia, on Dec. 2, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
Trump’s Department of Justice likely won’t cooperate with the international arrest warrant, giving Hernandez de facto exile in the U.S.