Trump says he'll pardon ex-Honduran president

Juan Orlando Hernandez is in U.S. prison for cocaine, weapons convictions.

- JOSH BOAK AND CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

FORMER Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, second from right, is extradited to the U.S. in 2022.

(ELMER MARTINEZ Associated Press)

President Trump said Friday that he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for cocaine trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison.

Trump, explaining his decision on social media, wrote that “according to many people that I greatly respect,” Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

The pardoning of a convicted drug trafficker comes as the Trump administration is carrying out deadly military strikes in the Caribbean that it describes as an anti-narcotics effort.

A jury in U.S. federal court in New York last year found that Hernandez had conspired with drug traffickers and used his military and national police force to enable tons of cocaine to make it unhindered into the United States. In handing down the 45-year sentence, the judge in the case had called Hernandez a “two-faced politician hungry for power” who protected a select group of traffickers.

Trial witnesses included traffickers who admitted responsibility for dozens of murders and said Hernandez was an enthusiastic protector of some of the world’s most powerful cocaine dealers, including notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life prison term in the U.S.

Hernandez, who had served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of about 10 million people, had been appealing his conviction and serving time at the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton, in West Virginia.