Donald Trump said he will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted on drug trafficking charges in a US court last year.
The US president said Hernandez had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” in a social media post announcing the move on Friday.
In March 2024, Hernandez was found guilty of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and possession of machine guns. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Trump has also backed conservative presidential candidate Nasri “Tito” Asfura in the Central American country's general election due to take place on Sunday.
Hernandez, a member of the National Party who served as Honduran president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in April 2022 to stand trial for masterminding a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
Two years later he was found guilty by a New York jury.
Opinion polls show the Honduran election remains a battle between three candidates, including Azfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa and leader of the conservative National Party.
Other contenders include Rixie Moncada, a former defense minister from the ruling leftist Libre Party, and Salvador Nasrallah, a TV presenter for the centrist Liberal Party.
On Friday, Trump criticized Moncada and Nasrallah, writing that the latter was a “borderline communist” who ran only to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.
He described Asfura as “standing up for democracy” and praised him for his campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with whom Trump has engaged in a war of words in recent months.
Nasrallah promised to sever ties with Venezuela if he wins.
The Trump administration has accused leftist Maduro, whose re-election last year was deemed illegitimate by many countries, of being the leader of a drug cartel.
She has used the fight against drug trafficking as a justification for a military build-up in the Caribbean and has targeted ships it says are used for smuggling – although some analysts describe the moves as a means of putting pressure on Latin American leaders.
Honduras has been ruled since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro, who has forged close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.
But Castro maintained a cooperative relationship with the United States, agreeing to maintain a long-standing extradition treaty with it. Her country is also home to a US military base dedicated to combating transnational organized crime in the region.
U.S. strikes on suspected drug vessels have killed more than 80 people since they began in August.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that the purpose of Operation Southern Lance was to destroy “narco-terrorists.”
But legal experts have questioned the legality of the strikes, noting that the US has not provided any evidence that the ships it attacked had drugs on them.
