Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez has been released from a US prison after receiving a pardon from US President Donald Trump on drug charges, according to online federal prisoner records.
Hernandez was released from the USP Hazleton high-security facility in West Virginia on Monday, records show.
Hernandez was convicted in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and possessing a machine gun. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The US president announced the move on Friday, saying in a social media post that Hernandez had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”.
Writing on her social media on Tuesday, Hernandez’s wife, Ana Garcia de Hernandez, thanked Trump for the pardon and said her husband is now a free man.
Hernandez, a member of Honduras’s National Party who served as the country’s president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in April 2022 to stand trial on charges of leading a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
During his trial, prosecutors in New York said Hernandez ran the Central American country like a “narco-state” and took millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers to protect them from the law.
As punishment he was also ordered to pay a fine of $8 million (£6 million).
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump explained his reasoning for the pardon.
He claimed the investigation into Hernandez was “set up by the Biden administration”, referring to his predecessor in the White House.
“They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” Trump said.
Hernandez’s release comes as Honduras remains stuck in a “technical glitch” over the election of a new president.
As of Monday afternoon, there were only 515 votes separating right-wing candidate Nasri Asfura from his nearest rival, Salvador Nasralla, a former TV host from the country’s centrist party.
Trump criticized Nasrallah on Friday, writing that he was “a borderline communist.”
He described Asfura as “standing up for democracy” and praised her for campaigning against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with whom Trump has been engaged in a war of words in recent months.
For his part, Nasralla has pledged to cut ties with Venezuela if he wins.
The Trump administration has accused leftist Maduro – whose re-election last year was rejected by many countries as illegitimate – of being the leader of a drugs cartel.
It has said that its efforts to combat drug trafficking justify the military buildup in the Caribbean. The administration has also attacked ships that have been used for smuggling – although some analysts have described these moves as a means to pressure Latin American leaders.
Honduras has been ruled since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro, who has cultivated close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.
Additional reporting by Nadine Youssef
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