{"id":600717,"date":"2025-11-29T06:06:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T06:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600717\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T06:06:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T06:06:18","slug":"donald-trump-to-pardon-former-honduran-president-serving-45-years-on-drug-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600717\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump to pardon former Honduran president serving 45 years on drug charges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n

Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n

Donald Trump has said he will pardon the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, who was convicted last year for facilitating cocaine trafficking to the US, ahead of a tense presidential election in the Central American country on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez\u201d, the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday \u2014 as he voiced support for Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura, the candidate from Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s conservative National party in the presidential race. <\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez, president from 2014 until 2022, was arrested weeks after leaving office and convicted in a New York federal court in 2024. He is serving a 45-year sentence <\/a>in the US for helping traffic more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into America.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s pardon strikes a contrast with the president\u2019s stated mission of cracking down on drug trafficking into the US \u2014 including a high-profile campaign to stem the flow of narcotics from Venezuela, in which he has launched missile strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.<\/p>\n

He has ordered a significant naval build-up, which includes <\/a>the US\u2019s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, a special operations vessel, a dozen other warships and more than 14,000 troops \u2014 as well as F-35 fighter jets. The military deployments are widely seen as an effort to force Venezuela\u2019s authoritarian President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro from power. <\/p>\n

Trump maintains that a win for Rixi Moncada, the candidate from the ruling Libre party in Sunday\u2019s general elections in Honduras will allow \u201cMaduro and his Narcoterrorists to take over another country\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US president said that \u201cmany people that I greatly respect\u201d had told him that Hern\u00e1ndez had been \u201ctreated very harshly and unfairly\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez won a controversial second term, amid widespread allegations of fraud, in elections in 2017 that sparked deadly protests.<\/p>\n

Honduras, which has a population of 10mn, hosts the most important US military base for trying to disrupt drug networks, but its political system has been corrupted by money from organised crime.<\/p>\n

Trump earlier this week took the unusual step of endorsing Asfura in the country\u2019s elections, which analysts say are too close to call. <\/p>\n

Ricardo Z\u00fa\u00f1iga, a former envoy for the so-called Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador under former president Joe Biden, said the electoral outcome was highly uncertain.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have opposition parties that are claiming that the government is already interfering with the election. You have the main institutions for both running and administering and overseeing the election results all called into question by the ruling party. And, of course, terrible polling,\u201d he said. \u201cThe true results may never be known because of the dysfunction of the counting system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump said that \u201cdemocracy is on trial in the coming Elections\u201d. <\/p>\n

Salvador Nasralla is also running in the election for the Liberal party, but Trump has slammed him as a \u201cborderline Communist\u201d seeking only to split Asfura\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cTito will be a Great President, and the United States will work closely with him in order to ensure the success, with all of its potential, of Honduras!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-600717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115631488654817418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}