Juan Orlando Hernández has a kind of luck that borders on a miracle. Born in a very poor household, he rose to become president of Honduras, and when it seemed he would spend the rest of his life in prison for drug trafficking, he received a pardon from Donald Trump. Brought down from grace by his former ally, the United States – which sentenced him to 45 years in prison last year – Hernández walked out of prison on Monday amid the intense pressure Trump is exerting over Honduras’s presidential elections.
He was president from 2014 to 2022 for the right-wing National Party (PN), the same party as Trump’s chosen candidate, Nasry Asfura, who is in a technical tie with television host Salvador Nasralla, with 43% of Sunday’s tally sheets still to be counted. In a dramatic twist, Trump announced on the eve of the elections that he would pardon Hernández, arguing that he was the victim of a “setup” by his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.
“JOH,” as Hondurans call him, had been out of office for just three months after handing power to leftist Xiomara Castro when he was extradited, on April 21, 2022, accused of conspiring to traffic drugs. A 57-year-old lawyer, he was extradited under the very extradition law he himself pushed through under pressure from Washington in 2012, when he was president of Congress.
Ship drugs to the gringos
Serene by nature and very careful about his appearance, he seemed calm even when his arrest in February 2022 was imminent, posting a photo of himself playing with his dogs. But at the first hearing he appeared tense, wearing a worn prison uniform that was too big for him, recalls an AFP journalist present in the New York courtroom, where he was accused of taking bribes from Mexican kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Before entering the courtroom, they removed his shackles, and he shuffled forward with small steps. He only recovered his smile when he saw familiar faces. Short in stature and fond of exercise, JOH describes himself as an “indio pelo parado” for his military-style haircut. He graduated from a military high school in crime-ridden San Pedro Sula, then went on to study law and later a master’s degree in Public Administration in New York from 1994 to 1995.
Married to lawyer Ana García, they have four children. His release is a “miracle,” his wife said as she thanked Trump for the pardon. His links to criminality began to come to light when his brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was arrested in 2018 in Miami and sentenced in 2021 to life in prison for large-scale drug trafficking.
But JOH always portrayed himself as the victim of “revenge” by the kingpins he extradited. Many of them testified against him in the New York court. “I am innocent,” he declared before hearing his sentence. One witness at the trial said he heard the former president boast that he was going to “ship drugs to the gringos right under their noses” and they “wouldn’t even notice.”
Large-scale corruption
Political rivals branded Hernández a “dictator” and accused him of enriching himself while in office. They also accused him of manipulating the justice system so it would validate his re-election – constitutionally forbidden – and of controlling the branches of government for his own benefit.
His second term was also dogged by fraud allegations. When the vote count showed current candidate Nasralla in the lead, a blackout occurred, and when the system came back online, Hernández had moved ahead in the tally.
Unfair treatment, according to Trump
Born on October 28, 1968, in a peasant family in the western department of Lempira, JOH entered politics in 1990 as an assistant to a brother who worked in the congressional secretariat. Eight years later he rose to the presidency of Congress. Trump pardoned him arguing that he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
