President Donald Trump said Friday that he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
President Donald Trump said Friday that he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The president explained his decision on social media by posting that “according to many people that I greatly respect,” Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
In March of last year, Hernandez was convicted in US court of conspiring to import cocaine into the US.
He had served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of roughly 10 million people.
Hernandez has been appealing his conviction and serving time at the US Penitentiary, Hazelton in West Virginia.
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Hernández’s wife and children gathered on the steps on their home in Tegucigalpa and kneeled in prayer, thanking God that Hernández would return to their family after almost four years apart.
It was the same home that Honduran authorities hauled him out of in 2022 just months after leaving office. He was extradited to the United States to stand trial.
García said they had just been able to speak with Hernández and tell him the news.
“He still didn’t know of this news and believe me, when we shared it his voice broke with emotion,” she said.
García thanked Trump, saying that Trump had corrected an injustice, maintaining that Hernández’s prosecution was a coordinated plot by drug traffickers and the “radical left” to seek revenge against the former president.
