Image source, Getty Images
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- author, Atahualpa Amerez
- Author title, BBC World News
US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is serving a long sentence for drug trafficking in the North American country.
Trump revealed his intention in a post on the Social Truth Network, in which he also expressed his support for candidate Nasri “Tito” Asfora, Hernandez’s successor in the Honduran National Party, before Sunday’s elections that will determine the country’s next president.
“I will grant a full and complete pardon to former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who, according to many people for whom I have great respect, was treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump said.
“This cannot be allowed, especially now, after the electoral victory of Tito Asvora, when Honduras is heading towards great political and financial success,” he added.
The US President did not specify when he would sign the pardon or provide further details.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, 57, was sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024, as well as a fine of US$8 million, for drug trafficking crimes in the United States.
Image source, Getty Images
He was convicted of importing cocaine and possessing “destructive devices” such as machine guns, according to the New York court that tried him.
Prosecutors alleged that Hernandez ran Honduras as a “narco-state” and accepted millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers to protect them from the law.
Hernandez pleaded his innocence in court and claimed that he was “wrongly and unjustly accused.”
He is currently being held at Hazelton Maximum Security Prison in West Virginia, where he is scheduled to serve his sentence until 2060.
Who is Juan Orlando Hernandez?
Hernandez was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, serving two consecutive terms in this country of more than 10 million people.
He initially ran as a law and order candidate, promising to tackle the country’s drug crime problem.
However, prosecutors accused him of associating with “some of the world’s largest drug traffickers to build a corrupt, violent, and brutal empire based on the illicit trafficking of tons of cocaine into the United States.”
Three months after leaving office, he was arrested and extradited to New York to face federal charges in the United States.
Image source, Reuters
Before his conviction, he was considered an important ally of the United States.
Honduras received more than US$50 million in anti-drug aid and several million more dollars in security and military assistance from the United States government, especially during Hernández’s presidential term.
In 2019, former President Donald Trump thanked Hernandez for “working closely with the United States.”
For his part, the then President of Honduras thanked Trump and the American people “for the support provided in the resolute battle against drug trafficking.”
Years later, prosecutors discovered that Hernandez had been connected to drug traffickers since 2004, long before he became president, and had facilitated the smuggling of about 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.
They alleged that drug traffickers paid them millions of dollars in bribes to allow cocaine to be smuggled from Colombia and Venezuela through Honduras to the United States.
His brother, a former congressman from Honduras, was jailed by the same Manhattan court in 2021 on other drug charges.
Trump supports Nasri Asfoura
Elections scheduled for Sunday in Honduras will determine who will succeed leftist Xiomara Castro, who has ruled the country since 2022, as president.
Nasri Asfoura, a businessman and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, is presenting himself in the elections as the main center-right choice with a promise to offer practical solutions to revitalize the economy and employment.
He will compete with official candidate Rexy Moncada and with Salvador Nasrallah, the former TV presenter who became Xiomara Castro’s second-in-command but ended up forming his own party.
Opinion polls do not show a clear candidate for the elections, which will be decided in one round.
Image source, Getty Images
On Friday, Donald Trump expressed his support for Nisri Asfoura.
He declared, “If Tito Asvora wins the presidency of Honduras, the United States will provide him with great support, because it has great confidence in him, his policies, and what he will do for the great people of Honduras.”
He added, “If he does not win, the United States will not waste its money, because the wrong leader can only bring disastrous consequences for any country, whatever it is.”
He added, “Tito will be a great president, and the United States will work closely with him to ensure Honduras succeeds to all its potential.”
In a previous message to the newspaper “Truth Social”, the US President expressed his vision for politics in Honduras, noting that “democracy will be tested in the upcoming elections in the beautiful country of Honduras on November 30.”
He wondered, “Will Maduro and his drug terrorists be able to control another country as they did with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela? The man who defends democracy and fights Maduro is Tito Asfora, the presidential candidate for the National Party.”
Trump distorted the credibility of both Xiomara Castro, “who says that Fidel Castro is her ideal,” and Nasrallah, whom he described as a “semi-communist” used by the ruling party to divide the opposition’s votes, and stressed that he is “not a reliable ally of freedom.”
The US President concluded his speech by saying: “Tito and I can work together to combat the communists working in the drug field and provide the necessary assistance to the Honduran people.”
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