Donald Trump has said he will grand a pardon to Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US on drug trafficking and weapons charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Trump said Friday in a post on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
In March of last year, Hern\u00e1ndez was convicted in US courts of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect US-bound cocaine shipments belonging to traffickers he once publicly proclaimed to combat. Speaking during closing arguments<\/a> at the trial, assistant US attorney Jacob Gutwillig said Hern\u00e1ndez had \u201cpaved a cocaine superhighway to the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez was sentenced last June and called his conviction wrongful. He had served served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of roughly 10 million people, and was considered a top US ally in Central America, particularly by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s announcement to pardon Hern\u00e1ndez comes even as the Republican leader casts himself as being tough on combating drug problems.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s administration designated multiple drug cartels as \u201cforeign terrorist organizations\u201d<\/a> and used claims of a \u201cwar on drugs\u201d<\/a> to justify deadly airstrikes on vessels across the Caribbean and Pacific. These strikes have prompted the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations to condemn the operations as extrajudicial executions.<\/a><\/p>\n Juan Orlando Hernandez in Manhattan federal court. Photograph: Jane Rosenberg\/Reuters<\/p>\n The post was part of a broader message from Trump that backed Tito Asfura for Honduras\u2019 presidency in upcoming elections, with Trump saying the US would be supportive of the country if he wins. But if Asfura loses the election this Sunday, Trump posted that \u201cthe United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Asfura\u2019s party forged a close partnership with Washington under Hern\u00e1ndez, who governed from 2014 to 2022 and was arrested shortly after leaving office.<\/p>\n Honduras has been governed since 2021 by Xiomara Castro, who has forged close ties with Cuba and Venezuela, two countries mired in deep economic and human rights crises whose governments the Trump administration sees as dictatorships and has repeatedly criticized.<\/p>\n