Hernández was convicted in 2024 of accepting millions in bribes to protect cocaine shipments
Donald Trump has said he will grand a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US on drug trafficking and weapons charges.
“I 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,” Trump said Friday in a post on Truth Social.
In March of last year, Hernández 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 at the trial, assistant US attorney Jacob Gutwillig said Hernández had “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
Hernández 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.
