Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was released from prison Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump — who is in the middle of a campaign against drug smuggling — pardoned him for trafficking cocaine.
Hernández was almost four years into his 45-year sentence for conspiring with cartels to distribute more than 400 tons of cocaine, as well as weapons offenses, when Trump pardoned him.
Hernández held office until shortly before his arrest and extradition to the U.S. in 2022. Echoing language Trump has used to describe legal action taken against him, Hernández had asked for a pardon in an October letter to Trump, calling his case an act of political persecution.
The American president alluded to himself in explaining to reporters Sunday why he would pardon a notorious drug trafficker if he wants to keep drugs out of the U.S.
“If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. “That includes this country, OK, to be honest. If somebody does something wrong, do you put the president in jail?”
Trump called the Hernández case a “Biden administration setup.”
Hernández’s lawyer, Renato C. Stabile, told MS NOW that his client wanted “to thank President Trump for correcting this injustice. President Hernández is glad this ordeal is over and is looking forward to regaining his life.”
The pardon was met with fierce backlash from Honduras’ current leadership, including Hernández’s successor, President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, called the move “a blatant, threatening, unfair and infamous foreign intervention to twist the popular will.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.