Donald Trump has said that he will pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges in a US court last year.
The US president said Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” in a social media post announcing the move.
Hernández was found guilty in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine into the US, possessing machine guns and was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a New York jury.
Trump also threw his support behind conservative presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura in the Central American nation’s general election, due to be held on Sunday.
Hernández, a member of the National Party, who served as Honduras’s president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the US in April 2022 to stand trial for running a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine to the US.
