The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, pardoned by Trump for his conviction for drug trafficking, is launched from jail | International | EUROtoday

Last Friday, Donald Trump promised in a message on his social community, Truth, to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced within the United States to 45 years in jail for his ties to drug trafficking. This Monday, at some point after the elections within the Central American nation, during which Trump tried to affect in favor of his candidate, the conservative Nasry Asfura, Hernández was launched from jail, in response to the registry of penitentiary establishments. His spouse, Ana García, confirmed it this Tuesday on her social networks.

“I will grant a full and complete pardon to former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who, according to many people whom I deeply respect, has been treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump wrote final Thursday. “This cannot be allowed, especially now, that, with the electoral victory of Tito Asfura [como se conoce al candidato]”Honduras is heading towards great political and financial success.”

Asfura was running for the same political party as Hernández to remove the left-wing government from power. Two days after the polls closed, it is still not clear who won: the victory of one of the two right-wing candidates, Asfura and the liberal Salvador Nasralla, who has not hesitated to proclaim himself the winner on social media, is decided in a vote-by-vote vote.

Hernández, known as JOH, was president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022 for the conservative National Party. There were years of collaboration with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. Or at least, they apparently were. In 2024, he was sentenced in Manhattan to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the United States. Three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crimes. The Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office had accused JOH of receiving a million dollars from the Mexican kingpin Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.

During the trial, evidence was provided such as a conversation in which JOH bragged about his lucrative crimes: “[Vamos a] “poking drugs up the faces of gringos.”

Criticism of double requirements

The pardon has unleashed criticism in Washington, as a result of apparent contradiction of the choice of the White House, which has been extrajudicially murdering suspected drug traffickers for 3 months in worldwide waters of the Caribbean, whereas deploying an exceptional, unprecedented navy operation, with greater than 12 warships, plane carriers and submarines and a few 15,000 troops stationed within the space. The said goal is the struggle in opposition to Venezuelan drug cartels, though few interpret the imminence of an assault in opposition to Chavismo as something aside from an try to power a regime change in Caracas.

Trump advised reporters on Sunday: “The people of Honduras really believe they were set up.” [con el juicio a JOH] and that’s horrible. He was principally convicted for being president of his nation… I’ve analyzed the information and I agree [con quienes creen en su inocencia]”.

Trump’s interference in final Sunday’s elections in Honduras didn’t cease at his submit on Friday. In one other message, he wrote: “Yes Tito Asfura wins, the United States will give him great support, since it has a lot of confidence in him, in his policies and in what he will do for the great Honduran people. If he does not win, the United States will not waste its money, because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic consequences to any country, no matter what it is.”

That was his second message of assist for Asfura in simply 48 hours, as a part of a method of insistence that recalled his efforts, apparently profitable, to affect the outcomes of the final Argentine legislative elections, during which he supported one other ally, the ultra-liberal Javier Milei. In a submit The earlier Wednesday, Trump insisted that the one candidate with whom he might work to fight “drug trafficking” is Asfura—a development businessman like Trump himself and former mayor of Tegucigalpa.

For the president of the United States, the opposite two candidates with choices are “communists”, although they don’t seem to be. These are Nasralla and the candidate of the leftist Free Party and former Minister of Economy, Rixi Moncada.

On Monday, once more in Truth, Trump as soon as once more intervened within the Honduran elections. He did so with a message during which he sows doubts concerning the scrutiny. Contrary to the official place of his Government, which had requested for endurance, he wrote that the Central American nation is “trying to change the results of its presidential election.” “If they do, it will be hell!” he insisted.