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The attorney general of Honduras is seeking the arrest of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Joael Antonio Zelaya Alvarez said on Monday he ordered Honduran authorities and asked Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest order against Hernandez for alleged fraud and money laundering charges. Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for helping move tons of cocaine into the US in 2024, was released from US federal prison a week ago.
“The web of corruption and criminal networks has deeply affected the life of our country,” Zelaya said, according to a translation of a post he wrote on X.
Zelaya included a photo of a two-year-old order signed by a magistrate of the Honduras Supreme Court, stating that it “must be executed in the case when the accused has been freed by the United States authorities.”
Former Honduran President released from US jail after Trump’s pardon
Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez, right, is pardoned by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
According to the Associated Press, dozens of Honduran officials and politicians were implicated in the so-called Pandora case, in which Honduran prosecutors alleged that government money was funneled through a network of non-governmental organizations to political parties, including Hernández’s 2013 presidential campaign.
The AP said Hernandez became the subject of a US extradition request from an alleged US ally in the war on drugs shortly after leaving office in 2022. He was detained by current President Xiomara Castro of the Social Democrat Libre Party and deported to the United States.
Renato Stabile, a lawyer for Hernández, told the AP in an email that, “This is clearly a blatant political move on the part of the defeated Libre party to try to intimidate President Hernández as he is being forced out of power in Honduras. This is a shameful and disappointing piece of political theater and these allegations are completely unfounded.”
Hernandez was freed after Trump announced he was issuing a “full and complete pardon” after he was found guilty of conspiring with drug traffickers to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the US.
Former world leader thanks Trump for apology: ‘You changed my life’
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, second from right, is led in handcuffs to a waiting plane while being extradited to the United States at an air force base in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, April 21, 2022. (Elmer Martínez/AP)
Trump said Hernandez was “treated too harshly and unfairly”, implying that his trial was politically motivated or over-prosecuted.
Hernandez was convicted in New York of conspiracy to import cocaine into the US and two related weapons offenses after a two-week trial.
According to the AP, Hernandez portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who worked closely with US officials under three US presidential administrations to reduce drug imports. But the judge said the evidence at trial proved the contrary and that Hernandez used “considerable acting skills” to make it appear he was an anti-drug trafficking warrior, while he deployed his country’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade.
Hernandez later thanked Trump for pardoning him and wrote on social media that he was “wrongfully convicted.”
President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks during the opening ceremony of the United Nations climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday, November 1, 2021. (Andy Buchanan/AP)
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Hernandez wrote on
Fox News Digital’s Ashley Carnahan, Michael Dorgan, Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
