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Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández reportedly claimed to have acquired assurances from Israel that it will act on his behalf within the occasion that the US would search his arrest on drug and weapons trafficking prices.
Hernandez was arrested at his dwelling on Tuesday by Honduran authorities who accepted an extradition request submitted by the US. Washington alleges that Hernández was a co-conspirator throughout his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial and that his political rise was fueled by drug earnings. The arrest simply got here three weeks after Hernandez accomplished his time period as president.
When Hernandez arrived in Israel final June to take part in a ceremony opening up his nation’s new embassy in Jerusalem, he advised officers in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s authorities that their predecessors had promised to do every little thing they might to stop his extradition in trade for him transferring the diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv, Channel 12 reported on Wednesday.
Hernandez introduced up the identical commerce final November when Israeli minister Eli Avidar visited Honduras to take part within the opening of a brand new Israeli embassy in Tegucigalpa, the community stated.
Responding to the report, an affiliate to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu advised Channel 12 that no request to stop Hernandez’s extradition had ever been raised by the Hondurans.
The arrest of Hernández and the photographs that adopted — a pacesetter shackled and paraded earlier than the cameras like a standard felony — had been a surprising reversal for a person who for years appeared impervious to rising allegations of corruption.
Whereas president from 2014 till January, he had the assist of US officers waging the battle on medicine and a few diplomats who didn’t see a greater possibility. However lower than a month out of workplace, his utility exhausted, the US authorities moved for his extradition and the possibility to make him an instance in a area wracked by corruption.
Hernández arrived on the Supreme Court docket of Justice on Wednesday morning for his preliminary courtroom look. About 150 supporters from his Nationwide Celebration awaited him, chanting “You’re not alone!”
Hours later, courtroom spokesman Melvin Duarte stated the decide had denied Hernández’s petition for home arrest and dominated that the previous president would stay in detention on the base of a Nationwide Police particular forces unit pending the end result of the extradition course of. The decide scheduled a courtroom session for March 16 to listen to proof supporting the US prices.
AP contributed to this report.
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