Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras, has been released from a US prison, according to online records of federal inmates, after he received a pardon from US President Donald Trump for drug charges.<\/p>\n
The records show Hern\u00e1ndez was released from the high security facility of USP Hazelton in West Virginia on Monday.<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez was found guilty in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine to the US, and of possessing machine guns. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.<\/p>\n
The US president said Hern\u00e1ndez had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” in a social media post announcing the move on Friday.<\/p>\n
Writing on her social media on Tuesday, Hern\u00e1ndez’s wife, Ana Garc\u00eda de Hern\u00e1ndez, thanked Trump for the pardon, and said her husband was now a free man.<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez, a member of Honduras’s National Party who served as the country’s president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the US in April 2022 to stand trial for running a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to smuggle hundreds of tonnes of cocaine to the US.<\/p>\n
During his trial, prosecutors in New York said Hern\u00e1ndez ran the Central American country like a “narco-state” and accepted millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers to shield them from the law.<\/p>\n
He was also ordered to pay a fine of $8m (\u00a36m) as part of his sentence.<\/p>\n
Trump explained his reasoning for the pardon while talking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday.<\/p>\n
He claimed the investigation into Hern\u00e1ndez was a “Biden administration set up”, referring to his predecessor in the White House.<\/p>\n
“They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” Trump said.<\/p>\n