US President Donald Trump has said he will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a US court last year.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post on Friday, congratulating the former president on the pardon, saying he was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
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.
In the same post, Trump also said on Sunday he endorsed conservative candidate Tito Asfura in the upcoming general election in the Central American country.
Hernández, a member of the National Party who served as President of Honduras 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 US.
Two years later a New York jury convicted him.
Polls show Honduras’s election is a contest between Asfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa and now leader of the National Party, former Defense Minister Rixi Moncada of the ruling leftist Libre party, and television host Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal Party.
Trump criticized Moncada and Nasralla in his Friday post, writing that Nasralla is “a borderline communist” who is only running to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.
In his post on Friday, Trump described Asfura as a candidate who “stands up for democracy” and is running against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The Trump administration has accused Maduro – whose re-election last year was rejected by many countries as rigged – of being the leader of a drugs cartel.
President Trump on Friday accused Maduro and his drug lords of taking over Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Honduras has been ruled since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro of the LIBRE party, who has cultivated close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.
But Castro has maintained cooperative relations with the United States, agreeing to preserve a long-standing extradition treaty with the United States. His country also hosts a US military base involved in targeting international organized crime in the region.
In August, the US launched an anti-narcotics campaign targeting boats carrying drugs from Venezuela to the US. More than 80 people have been killed so far in American attacks on suspicious ships.
According to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the purpose of “Operation Southern Spear” is to remove “narco-terrorists” from the Western Hemisphere. But legal experts have questioned the legality of the attacks, saying the US has provided no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs.
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