Honduras

Statement comes as regional body says no evidence of fraud in November vote that Trump-backed candidate Asfura leads.

The head of Honduras’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has decried acts preventing the ongoing recount of the Central American country’s presidential election, as a regional body said there was no reason to suspect fraud in the November 30 vote.

Ana Paola Hall’s statement on Monday came amid ongoing protests and unrest over the unresolved election. Nasry Asfura, a right-wing businessman publicly supported by US President Donald Trump, has held a razor-thin lead over his top opponent, Salvador Nasralla.

At least 99 percent of votes have already been counted, but CNE has said that nearly 2,800 ballots will need to be re-examined through a special recount.

In a post on X, Hall said disturbances seen in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa, have “prevented the necessary conditions for the special recount to begin”.

Observers have said infighting at the CNE, which is run by three officials each representing one of the major political parties, has delayed reaching the final results.

Both Nasralla, a conservative, and outgoing left-wing President Xiomara Castro have alleged vote tampering, although several international missions have dismissed the claims.

On Monday, the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional body, said that despite a lack of expertise in overseeing the election, there was not “any evidence that would cast doubt on the results”.

The OAS mission “urgently calls on the electoral authorities to immediately begin the special recount and to explore all possible ways to obtain the official results as quickly as possible,” OAS official Eladio Loizaga said in a report he read to the group’s members.

“The current delay in processing and publishing the results is not justifiable,” he said in the report.

The OAS statement added that its mission of 101 observers from 19 countries “did not observe any malice or obvious manipulation of the electoral materials or computer systems”. The finding was in line with that of a parallel European Union mission.

The election in Honduras had been in turmoil even before polls opened, with several major parties, political figures, and foreign interference for months casting doubt on the election’s integrity.

The most prominent scandal involved an investigation by the attorney general into a member of Asfura’s National Party for allegedly discussing plans with a military officer to influence the vote.

The candidate for outgoing President Castro’s LIBRE party, Rixi Moncada, later told Reuters news agency that the alleged conspiracy proved the election was “the most rigged in history”.

Several candidates have also criticised the influence of Trump, who endorsed Asfura in the final stretch of the race and vowed to withhold US funding if his candidate did not win.

The US president also pardoned former Honduran President and National Party member Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been convicted in the US of drug trafficking, two days before the vote.

Authorities in Honduras, a country of about 11 million, subsequently issued a fresh arrest warrant for Hernandez.

Dec. 9 (UPI) — Honduras’ attorney general on Monday night announced that he had issued an international arrest warrant for former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, days after he was released from a U.S. prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez said in a statement that he had instructed ATIC, Honduras’ elite criminal investigative body housed within the Public Prosecutor’s Office, to pursue the international arrest warrant, while urging security agencies and international allies, including INTERPOL, to do the same.

“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by criminal networks that have deeply marked the life of our country,” he said.

Hernandez is accused of money laundering and fraud in what is known as Pandora II, a corruption case in which prosecutors allege that between 2010 and 2013, a network siphoned nearly $12 million in public funds meant to alleviate extreme poverty in Honduras through abuse of authority, fraud and money laundering.

As part of the sprawling case investigating several government officials, including ministers, Honduras’ Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Hernandez in October 2023. Prosecutors accuse him of receiving at least $2.5 million of the siphoned funds through foundations, front men and fictitious contracts. The money was allegedly used to finance his political campaign.

In the United States, Hernandez was charged with drug trafficking and weapons offenses in late January 2022 during the Biden administration amid its crackdown on corruption in Central and South America.

Honduran authorities arrested him in February 2022 and extradited him to the United States, where he was convicted in March 2024 on all counts and sentenced in June of that year to 45 years in prison.

U.S. prison officials released Hernandez earlier this month after receiving a pardon from Trump, who said the disgraced Honduran president had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

Trump made the announcement while urging Hondurans to vote for conservative Nasry “Tito” Asfura for president ahead of the Nov. 30 elections, in which he is challenging left-leaning President Xiomara Castro, moves widely seen as opposition to her government.

The announcement of the pardon was met with criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, as well as critics of Trump’s administration, which has killed 86 people in 22 military strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking boats in international waters.

“Hernandez once boasted at a meeting of narco-traffickers that ‘together they would shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.’ What message does pardoning this criminal send to parents who have lost children to narcotics, to law enforcement officers risking everything to stop the flow of deadly drugs?” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a Dec. 2 floor speech.

“This disgraceful pardon should be met with bipartisan condemnation as an affront to our values, our safety, our rule of law, our democracy.”

Hernandez served two terms as president, from 2014 to 2022.

The election between Asfura and Castro was still too close to call as of Monday night.

The arrest warrant for the country’s former president comes amid a closely-fought election.

Honduras’s top prosecutor has issued an international arrest warrant for former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, intensifying legal and political turmoil just days after the ex-leader walked free from a United States prison.

Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya announced the move on Monday in a post on X, saying he instructed the Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal, the main investigative body of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and urged Interpol “to execute the international arrest warrant against former President Juan Orlando Hernández”.

Hemos sido lacerados por los tentáculos de la corrupción y por las redes criminales que han marcado profundamente la vida de nuestro país. Es por ello que en el marco del Día Internacional Contra la Corrupción que se conmemora mañana 9 de diciembre, informo al pueblo hondureño… pic.twitter.com/8V4cpyrKq2

— Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez (@jaza_hn) December 8, 2025

Zelaya’s announcement comes as Hernandez was released from a 45-year prison sentence in the US after President Donald Trump pardoned him.

Hernandez’s wife, who insists he is innocent, said he will not return to Honduras immediately due to safety concerns and that he is currently in a “safe place” in the US.

Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022, where New York prosecutors had accused him of three drug- and weapons-related offences and alleged he used his presidency to transform Honduras into a “narco-state”.

US prosecutors later secured a conviction, saying Hernandez played a central role in moving cocaine through Honduras and onward to the United States. He was handed a 45-year prison sentence on the back of “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world”, according to prosecutors.

At the same time, Hernandez has been at the centre of investigations in his country that have targeted current and former politicians suspected of diverting public money. In 2023, along with several former officials, he was charged with involvement in the alleged misappropriation of more than $12m in state funds for his political campaign.

Trump’s decision to pardon Hernandez came as he urged Hondurans to rally behind presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a member of Hernandez’s right-wing National Party, in the country’s November 30 presidential election.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly”, Trump wrote in a social media post last week.

With 97 percent of ballots counted, Asfura held 40.52 percent of the vote, remaining ahead of centrist rival Salvador Nasralla by roughly 42,100 votes.

The tally had already been halted temporarily on Friday with 88 percent of ballots processed. According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), about 16 percent of tally sheets contained irregularities requiring further review, an issue it attributed to the company managing the vote-counting system.

International observers have urged authorities to speed up the counting process and take steps to reassure voters of its integrity.