Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in the United States for drug trafficking and who returned to his country on Sunday, thanked President Donald Trump for pardoning him, saying he was the target of a ‘witch hunt’.
Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in the United States for drug trafficking and returned to his country on Sunday, thanked President Donald Trump for pardoning him, saying he felt he was the target of a ‘witch hunt.’
Juan Orlando Hernández, president from 2014 to 2022, will still have to face justice in his country for embezzlement of public funds in connection with financing his 2013 campaign.
Sentenced in the U.S. in 2024 to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, he was pardoned by Donald Trump in November 2025 and released in December of that same year.Upon his arrival, he thanked the American president.
“The most informed president in the world said: ‘I have reviewed the case, my team and I have gone through it in detail, and a terrible injustice has been done here, it’s a witch hunt, it’s using justice as a political weapon,'” he said in front of hundreds of his supporters who came to greet him.
His pardon coincided with the American president’s involvement in the presidential election in Honduras. Donald Trump had then supported the conservative businessman Nasry Asfura, a member of Mr. Hernández’s National Party, who won the election. He had threatened to cut aid to Honduras, the poorest and most violent country in Central America, if his favorite didn’t win.The one his fellow countrymen nickname ‘JOH,’ in reference to his initials, arrived on a private flight at Palmerola airport, 60 km northwest of Tegucigalpa, where his family welcomed him on the tarmac, then rode in the back of a van to a property where he thanked his supporters for their welcome, most of whom are from the PN.
Open to a return to politics
From a stage with a giant screen, Juan Orlando Hernández, a 57-year-old lawyer, also hinted at the possibility of returning to politics if he saw that ‘radicalism’ could come back to power, referring to the former left-wing government.
His return has been criticized by the opposition. ‘He should come and pay for his crimes,’ said former left-wing presidential candidate Rixi Moncada in a video. ‘A pardon does not mean innocence,’ wrote Liberal lawmaker Alia Kafati on X, adding that ‘it’s a sad day.’
Accused of embezzling two million dollars of public funds to finance his 2013 presidential campaign, Mr. Hernández is set to appear in court on August 3. He maintains that he is ‘innocent.'”I am certainly not going to lower my head,” he declared, announcing that he would try to recover the 131 assets that had been confiscated from him during his extradition.
The former president returned after a Honduran judge suspended an arrest warrant against him, in exchange for his commitment to appear at the hearing on August 3, which his family and supporters took advantage of to organize a welcome parade and religious ceremonies.
His return also comes four months after the right-wing majority in Congress removed Attorney General Johel Zelaya, who was close to the left.
This is “a test for judicial independence,” Ana María Méndez, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told AFP.”Drugs up the gringos’ noses”
Two years after his extradition, Mr. Hernández was found guilty in 2024 of taking part in and protecting a network that shipped more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States between 2004 and 2022.
In return, he reportedly received millions of dollars from the cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel led by the famous Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S.
According to U.S. prosecutors, during his presidency, Honduras had become a “narco-state,” a “superhighway” through which a large part of the drug traffic from Colombia to the U.S. passed.
During the trial, a witness claimed to have heard the former president brag that he was going to “put the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and that they wouldn’t “even notice.”Donald Trump had justified his pardon by calling it a “horrible witch hunt orchestrated” by his predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden.
“JOH” had become, in 2014 at the age of 45, the youngest president of Honduras. His reelection in 2018, marred by suspicions of fraud, had been contested by major popular protests that were harshly repressed.
Daniel FONSECA
