By Santiago Pérez and Juan Carlos Rivera
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras -- Honduras' attorney general urged international authorities to arrest a former president on corruption charges days after he walked out of a U.S. prison following a pardon by President Trump.
Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted in the U.S. last year of helping smuggle 400 tons of cocaine and was serving a 45-year prison sentence. He was released last week from Hazelton, a high-security prison in West Virginia, after Trump's unconditional pardon.
Honduran Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya asked Interpol, the global police organization, to execute an arrest warrant for Hernández issued in late 2023 for fraud and money laundering.
"We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by criminal networks that have profoundly marked the life of our country," Zelaya wrote on X on Monday. He included a photo of the arrest warrant issued in case Hernández were to be released by U.S. authorities after his extradition in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors said Hérnandez used his political influence to enable smugglers to ship tons of cocaine in exchange for millions of dollars from some of the world's most powerful cartels. The money was used to fund his political career and tighten the grip of Hernandez's National Party on Honduras, the U.S. indictment said.
While Hernández can't be charged with the same offenses for which he was tried and pardoned in the U.S., the arrest warrant is linked to the diversion of public funds into political campaigns conducted over a decade ago, said a spokesman for Zelaya.
Luis Javier Santos, the anticorruption prosecutor overseeing the case, said he was skeptical that justice could be served.
"I don't think the system is prepared to deliver justice, the influence of political power is very strong, as is economic power," he said.
The warrant was issued in 2023 but hadn't been released until now because Hernández was in prison, said Zelaya's spokesman.
Renato Stabile, Hernandez's lawyer, said that the warrant's release was politically motivated.
"This is nothing more than lawfare being waged by the ruling leftist party Libre, part of a desperate and shameful attempt to stay in power," Stabile said.
In Tegucigalpa, the country's capital, electoral authorities were still conducting a manual vote count after the two conservative candidates from opposition parties were nearly tied in the Nov. 30 presidential poll.
Nasry "Tito" Asfura, the candidate of Hernández's conservative National Party, was leading with 40.5%, while Salvador Nasralla, a sports journalist and media personality who ran for the Liberal Party, was behind with 39.2% of the votes.
Nasralla, who had been leading in the polls before Trump disrupted the elections by endorsing Asfura, accused the National Party of trying to steal the election by altering the vote count. The National Party has denied wrongdoing.
Despite the fraud allegations and even if Hernández ends up exerting power behind the throne, Nasralla said he doesn't plan to demand the election be annulled because his most important goal was to get the ruling leftist party out of power.
"I will accept the results," Nasralla said in an interview.
Write to Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2025 12:59 ET (17:59 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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