Honduran Police Arrest Former President at US Request

Honduran police arrested former President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Tuesday at the request of the United States, which is seeking his extradition to stand trial for his alleged involvement in illicit drug trafficking.

Hernandez, who left office three weeks ago, was escorted from his home in Tegucigalpa in shackles and a bulletproof jacket.

The Supreme Court of Justice chose a judge to handle the case, and that judge signed an order for the former president’s arrest. Police, who had surrounded Hernandez’s home since Monday, took him into custody.

“It is not an easy time. I don’t wish to do this to anyone,” Hernandez said in an audio message posted on his Twitter profile early Tuesday morning. He said he was ready to go with police in order to “face this situation and defend myself.”

The extradition request said that since 2004, Hernandez allowed tons of cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia to travel through Honduras on its way to the United States, while protecting drug traffickers from investigation, in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.

Hernandez was repeatedly implicated as a co-conspirator in his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial by New York prosecutors. The brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was found guilty of drug and weapons charges and sentenced to life in prison.

FILE – Protestors celebrate outside the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York after Tony Hernandez, brother of the president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, was sentenced to life for drug trafficking offenses, March 30, 2021.

Hernandez was once a key regional ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month there were credible reports that Hernandez “has engaged in significant corruption by committing or facilitating acts of corruption and narco-trafficking” and using the proceeds to fund his political career.

After eight years as president, Hernandez was sworn in as Honduras’ representative to the Central American Parliament on January 27, just hours after his successor, Xiomara Castro, became the country’s first woman president. His lawyer says he has immunity from extradition because he is a member of the regional parliament.

The extradition process is likely to last for several weeks.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

Pentagon Reporters Request Access to Troops in East Europe

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Pentagon reporters have asked the Biden administration to grant them access to the approximately 3,000 U.S. troops being deployed to Eastern Europe and Germany in response to rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

The Pentagon Press Association, which represents about 100 journalists, including two at Voice of America, wrote a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan requesting that they “lift the ban on news coverage of American military members deploying to Europe to reassure NATO allies during the Ukraine crisis.”

“The existing ban, including denial of reporters’ requests to speak directly to troops at their deployed locations and to embed with units, is contrary to the basic principle of press freedom,” the association’s board wrote.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon that the administration respected the concerns of the press but was “not at a point now” to provide the access requested.

“We don’t make decisions to grant access or not to grant access lightly, and there’s lots of factors that go into that. Sometimes it has to do with operational security. Sometimes it has to do with how that kind of access nests into the larger strategy that we’re pursuing,” Kirby said.

Russia has placed more than 100,000 of its troops along its border with Ukraine, in the illegally annexed Crimea region and along Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus.

Moscow says its troop placements are for military exercises and claims it has no intention of invading Ukraine.

In response to Russia’s troop buildup, President Joe Biden ordered about 2,000 U.S. forces to Poland and Germany and moved about 1,000 troops from Germany to Romania. Both Poland and Romania border Ukraine.

The U.S. says it has no plans to place combat troops in Ukraine. A small number of U.S. troops are in Ukraine as part of a training program that began after Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.