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Palm Beach, United States: US President Donald Trump on Friday made a major intervention into Honduran politics days before the country's presidential election, pardoning a convicted ex-leader.
Trump said he will pardon ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted last year in a US court of drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Hernandez, who led the Central American nation from 2014 to 2022, was accused by US prosecutors of facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
He was extradited to the United States just weeks after leaving office, when the current president, leftist Xiomara Castro, came to power.
Trump's stunning announcement came in a social media post proclaiming support for Nasry Asfura, the candidate of Hernandez's right-wing party in Honduras's presidential election on Sunday.
The US president had earlier endorsed Asfura, but his latest comments went further, apparently conditioning future aid to Honduras on his victory.
Three-way race
Asfura, a 67-year-old construction magnate and former mayor of the Honduran capital, is running in a tight three-way race against leftist lawyer Rixi Moncada and fellow right-wing TV host Salvador Nasralla.
The pardoning of Hernandez comes despite a major US operation in Latin America, which Washington says aims to halt drug trafficking, in which over 80 people have been killed in strikes in international waters.
A jury in New York convicted Hernandez in March 2024 of having facilitated the smuggling of hundreds of tons of cocaine -- mainly from Colombia and Venezuela -- to the United States via Honduras since 2004, starting long before he became president.
Trump said in his social media post on Friday that Hernandez "has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly," without elaborating.
