Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández said Wednesday that a United States appeals court overturned the 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking that had been imposed on him in 2024, after which he thanked President Donald Trump. Hernández, who governed Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was pardoned by Trump last November amid heavy pressure aimed at helping now-President Nasry Asfura, a political ally of the former leader, win the election.
“It is a complete clean slate, it is total justice (…). We give thanks to President Trump, to all the friends who I know are thousands and thousands in Honduras and outside Honduras who have supported us,” Hernández said in a virtual conference from an unidentified US city. His message was broadcast during a press conference in which his wife, Ana García, announced that an appeals court overturned “the conviction and sentence,” and ordered Judge Kevin Castel to remove “the punishment imposed in June 2024.”
“It is completely eliminated, the charges unfairly brought have been dismissed. They no longer exist,” García announced at her home in Tegucigalpa. Hernández had been convicted on charges of helping bring hundreds of tons of drugs into the United States in alliance with traffickers such as Mexican kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
“Today the United States justice system proves me right,” added Hernández, who also asked Trump to approve visas for his family so they can be reunited. When he granted the pardon, Trump said that “JOH,” as Hondurans call him, was the victim of a “setup” by his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.
But for many, the pardon is a contradiction of Trump’s hardline anti-drug trafficking policy in Latin America.
Back with head held high
The former president’s defense team had withdrawn its appeal, considering that it was no longer necessary because of the pardon. Hernández, a 57-year-old lawyer, was extradited in April 2022 shortly after leaving the presidency by the leftist government of Xiomara Castro, under the extradition law that he himself approved under pressure from Washington in 2012, when he was president of Congress.
“Four years ago they took me from the country in a disgraceful way as part of a political revenge by those who, by harassing me, wanted to hide their own crimes,” the former president said in his virtual message.
But now, he said, “there is no criminal record.” “Soon I will return with my head held high, as I always had it, despite the fact that they wanted me to kneel. I will continue proving my innocence,” he added. The former leader also asked the Honduran justice system “to suspend the arrest warrant” so he can face charges in his country if necessary.
Hernández has always considered himself the victim of “revenge” by the traffickers he extradited. Many of them testified against him in the New York court. One witness said during the trial that he heard the former president brag that he was going to “slip the drugs to the gringos right under their noses” and that they were not “even going to notice.”
His brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was arrested in Miami in 2018 and sentenced in 2021 to life in prison for “large-scale” drug trafficking.
