Trump says he will pardon ex-Honduras president convicted of drug trafficking

Donald Trump said he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a U.S. court last year.

The US president said in a social media post announcing the move on Friday that Hernandez had been 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.

Trump has also endorsed conservative presidential candidate Nasri “Tito” Asfula in the Central American country’s election scheduled for Sunday.

Hernandez, 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 orchestrating a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.

Two years later, he was convicted by a New York jury.

Opinion polls show the Honduran election remains a contest between three candidates, including Asfulla, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa and leader of the conservative National Party.

Rixi Moncada, a former defense minister from the ruling left-wing Liberal party, and TV host Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal party are also in the running.

Trump criticized Moncada and Nasrallah on Friday, writing that the latter was a “fringe communist” who was running only to split votes between Moncada and Asfra.

He described Asfra as “defending democracy” and praised his campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, with whom Trump has engaged in a war of words in recent months.

Nasrallah promised to sever ties with Venezuela if he won.

The Trump administration accuses leftist Maduro, whose re-election last year is considered illegitimate by many countries, of being a leader of drug cartels.

It has used the fight against drug trafficking as an excuse to build up military power in the Caribbean and has carried out strikes on ships it said were used for smuggling – although some analysts have described these moves as a means of putting pressure on Latin American leaders.

Honduras has been governed since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro, who has developed close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.

But Castro has maintained a cooperative relationship with the United States and agreed to maintain a long-standing extradition treaty with the United States. Her country also hosts a U.S. military base involved in the fight against transnational organized crime in the region.

Since August, the United States has carried out attacks on ships suspected of transporting drugs, resulting in the deaths of more than 80 people.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated that the purpose of “Operation Southern Spear” was to eliminate “narco-terrorists.”

But legal experts have questioned the legality of the attack, noting that the United States has provided no evidence that the ships it struck were carrying drugs.