Trump says he will pardon ex-Honduras president convicted of drug trafficking

US President Donald Trump has said that he will pardon the ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges in a US court last year.

Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post on Friday, congratulating the former president on the pardon, saying he was "treated very harshly and unfairly".

Hernández was found guilty in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine into the US, and of possessing machine guns. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

In the same post, Trump also said he supported conservative candidate Tito Asfura in the upcoming general election in the Central American country on Sunday.

Hernández, a member of the National Party who served as Honduras's president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in April 2022 to stand trial for running a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine to the US.

He was convicted by a New York jury two years later.

Polls show the Honduran election remains a toss-up between Asfura, who is the former mayor of Tegucigalpa and now leader of the National Party, Rixi Moncada, the former defence minister with the ruling leftist LIBRE Party, and Salvador Nasralla, a television host with the centrist Liberal Party.

Trump criticised Moncada and Nasralla in his Friday post, writing that Nasralla is "a boderline Communist" who is only running to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.

Trump in his post on Friday called Asfura a candidate that is "standing up for democracy" and fighting against Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration has accused Maduro - whose re-election last year was dismissed as rigged by many countries - of being the leader of a drugs cartel.

President Trump on Friday accused Maduro "and his narcoterrorists" of taking over Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Honduras has been governed since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro of the LIBRE Party, who had forged close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.

But Castro has maintained a cooperative relationship with the US, agreeing to preserve a long-running extradition treaty with the United States. Her country also hosts a US military base involved in targeting transnational organised crime in the region.

In August, the US launched a counternarcotics operation targeting boats it accuses of transporting drugs from Venezuela to America. More than 80 people have been killed in the US strikes on suspected vessels since.

According to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the aim of "Operation Southern Spear" is to remove "narcoterrorists" from the Western Hemisphere. But legal experts have questioned the legality of the strikes, pointing out that the US has provided no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs.