(EFE).- Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was captured this Tuesday at his home in Tegucigalpa and allegedly transferred to give his first statement before a natural judge who ordered his arrest, after the US requested it on Monday, for extradition purposes, for drug trafficking among other crimes.
Hernández was captured under a rigorous security device that since Monday night surrounded his residence in an exclusive area of the Honduran capital.
The capture operation was headed by the Minister of Security, Ramón Sabillón. The former ruler was handcuffed at the hands and feet in front of the entrance gate of his residence. Hernández left his house covered with a blue cap and mask of the same color after 2:00 p.m. local time and, immediately, policemen put a bulletproof vest on him and proceeded to handcuff his hands and feet.
He was then put into an armored vehicle, one of several in a caravan, and taken to a unit of the National Police where he would be giving his first preliminary statement, as part of the extradition judicial process.
The US embassy. in Tegucigalpa affirmed this Tuesday that Hernández “participated in a violent drug trafficking conspiracy to receive shipments of multiple tons of cocaine sent to Honduras from Colombia and Venezuela, among other places.”
The drug was moved “by air and sea routes, and to transport the drugs to the west of Honduras, to the border with Guatemala, and finally to the United States,” the diplomatic mission indicated in an extensive note addressed to the Honduran Foreign Ministry in Tegucigalpa, in which he confirmed the request for Hernández’s capture for extradition purposes made by Washington on Monday.
