Weekly Report - 30 July 2026 (WR-26-30)

“An unprecedented point of inflection in the country’s political and judicial history.” This was the assessment of local anti-corruption NGO Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción of the significance of the return of former president Juan Orlando Hernández (Partido Nacional, PN, 2014-2022) to Honduras, where he is now due to face trial for money laundering and fraud. Controversially pardoned last year by US President Donald Trump, who released him from a 45-year jail sentence he was serving in the US for drug-related charges, Hernández announced his imminent return last month [WR-26-26] after a judge accepted his request to appear before the courts voluntarily, suspending an arrest warrant issued under the previous leftist Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) government. The trial, which is over the Pandora II case, an extension of the Pandora case, one of the most high-profile corruption cases in Honduras in recent years, looks set to subject the country’s judiciary to renewed scrutiny.