The police have arrested former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after a request by the United States government for his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges.

Though Mr Hernández was scheduled to make his initial court appearance in Tegucigalpa on Wednesday, He was arrested from his home on Tuesday at the request of the U.S. government on charges of drug trafficking, using weapons for drug trafficking and conspiracy to use weapons in drug trafficking.

The arrest came less than three weeks after Mr Hernández left office and years of allegations by U.S. prosecutors of his alleged links to drug traffickers.

Mr Hernández left office last month with the swearing in of President Xiomara Castro. He was sworn in as Honduras’ representative to the Central American Parliament the same day.

U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had accused Mr Hernández of funding his political rise with profits from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting their shipments.

Mr Hernández had been implicated as a co-conspirator during his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial. His brother, Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, was sentenced to life in prison on drug and weapons charges in March 2021. At his sentencing, assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Laroche had characterised the crimes as “state-sponsored drug trafficking.”

The extradition request from the U.S. revealed that since 2004, Mr Hernández 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.