(CNN) –– This Thursday began the extradition of Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, to the United States, weeks following the Supreme Court in Tegucigalpa ratified its decision to hand him over to that country and rejected a last appeal filed by the defense.
With a strong security operation of some 800 to 1,000 members of the National Police, Hernández was transferred by helicopter to the Toncontín airport in Tegucigalpa from where he will travel under the custody of agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, for his acronym in English).
In the United States, he is expected to appear in federal court where his arrest will be made official.
Last January, the United States asked Honduras to hand over Hernández, who is facing charges related to drug trafficking.
The former president, who has been held in the National Directorate of Special Forces of the National Police since February 15, has pleaded not guilty to all charges on several occasions. He insists that he is not a drug trafficker, and assures that during his eight years in office he helped fight this crime together with US agencies.
The extradition process of Juan Orlando Hernández
On March 28, the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras upheld Hernández’s extradition, following the defense appealed the ruling of a judge who approved the measure. At that time, Melvin Duarte, spokesman for the Judiciary, explained that the plenary decision was unappealable. A day later, Juan Orlando Hernández’s lawyers filed an amparo appeal to avoid extradition, which the Constitutional Chamber of the Honduran Supreme Court declared inadmissible on April 6.
Just days before, Ana García de Hernández, wife of the former president, published a letter on Twitter which, he assures, the former president wrote in “his own handwriting.” In the letter he reiterates his innocence and says he is “the victim of revenge and a conspiracy.”
In the open letter to the nation that the former president wrote according to his wife, he says that what he is experiencing is “a threat from the cartels, it is an orchestrated trap so that no government will confront them once more.” And he added: “I only hope that justice is done, that the right that assists us people and nations is respected.”
With information from Elvin Sandoval, Marlon Sorto, Juan Carlos Paz, María Plaza and Ana Cucalón, all from CNN en Español.