Juan Orlando Hernandez was president of Honduras from 2014 until 2022. (Reuters: Andy Buchanan)
Donald Trump says his country is at war with drug-smuggling "narco-terrorists".
His military has been controversially bombing boats in the Caribbean — killing scores of people — in what the White House describes as national "self-defence" against traffickers.
Mr Trump is threatening military action against Venezuela next. He has also said he would be "proud" to strike targets in Mexico.
"Whatever we have to do to stop the drugs," he said when the ABC asked him about this recently.
At the same time, the US president has just pardoned and released a man who was in jail for overseeing one of the world's worst drug conspiracies.
Juan Orlando Hernandez used his position as the president of Honduras to help flood the US with billions of hits of cocaine, a New York court was told last year.
Donald Trump said people in Honduras asked him to pardon the former president and he "felt very good about it". (Reuters: Brian Snyder)
Over eight years in power from 2014, Hernandez ran Honduras "as a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity", according to the US's attorney-general at the time, Merrick Garland.
He had made himself millions of dollars in drug-money bribes in the process, government prosecutors argued in court.
A jury agreed, finding Hernandez guilty of drug trafficking and related weapons offences.
He was sentenced to 45 years in a US prison.
But on Monday, local time, he walked free.
Hernandez's 'considerable acting skills'
Hernandez, who led Honduras's right-wing National Party, portrayed himself as a drug-fighting president.
It took "considerable acting skills" to do so, district court judge P Kevin Castel said as he jailed Hernandez last July.
"In a political environment in which the public sentiment in Honduras and its allies, including the US, was vehemently opposed to drug trafficking, it was necessary for Hernandez to maintain the public image of being an anti-drug crusader," Judge Castel said.
In sentencing, the judge referenced evidence that showed Hernandez had been accepting hefty payments from drug cartels since before becoming president.
Juan Orlando Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022.
They included a $US1 million ($1.5 million) contribution to his election campaign from "El Chapo", the head of the Sinaloa cartel, which was sending cocaine from Colombia to the US via Honduras.
Sinaloa, and other cashed-up cartels, were rewarded with protected smuggling routes through the country. They were protected by police and corrupted national institutions.
According to court transcripts, government prosecutor Jacob Gutwillig explained it this way:
"Under the defendant's administration, violence, poverty, fear, and migration soared.
"Untold tons of cocaine arrived into Honduras by boat, plane, and truck.
"And he allowed them, he sanctioned them to be transported across Honduras in armoured vehicles protected by men with automatic weapons, destructive devices, weapons of war, under the protection of the military and the police.
"And he ultimately helped his partners use Honduras as a springboard for that cocaine into the United States through Guatemala and Mexico."
Mr Gutwillig said it led to "unspeakable violence and destabilising corruption" in the Central American country.
"Dozens upon dozens of murders, traffickers becoming politicians, and politicians becoming traffickers.
"The defendant fed this never-ending cycle of drug trafficking and corruption that tore his country apart."
Family's fight for freedom
Hernandez has always maintained his innocence.
He argued his enemies in the organised crime world set him up because he dared to take them on.
Court transcripts show he also told his sentencing hearing that "certain parts" of America's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) "did not like what I did in Honduras, because they were used to letting everything happen".
His prosecution "was a political persecution by drug traffickers and politicians", he insisted.
But the prosecution countered that the evidence against him was "crushing".
It included witness testimony from drug traffickers who admitted to paying him bribes. (Hernandez's lawyers argued they gave testimony in exchange for favourable treatment in their own cases.)
There were also drug ledgers bearing Hernandez's initials, "JOH".
And in intercepted phone calls, the Honduran leader of multinational crime group MS-13 spoke about Hernandez taking cash and gifting drug routes.
The judge said the jury "saw him for what he was — a two-faced politician, hungry for power, who presented himself as a champion against gangs, murder, crime, and drug trafficking, but secretly protected a select group of drug traffickers".
But his family and other supporters kept up the fight for his freedom.
And after the election of Mr Trump, they adopted some of the US president's favoured talking points as they publicly pleaded for him to intervene.
Hernandez's wife, Ana Garcia, was prolific on social media, where she complained of a "conspiracy between the radical left and drug trafficking".
"My husband Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras is a victim of #lawfare by Biden's DOJ and the deep state," she wrote in a typical X post in February.
Ana García said her husband was a victim of "lawfare". (Reuters: Leonel Estrada)
A helpful ally
The cause was taken up by one of Mr Trump's inner-circle supporters.
Roger Stone, who has been a friend and adviser to Mr Trump for decades, has spent months arguing for Hernandez's pardon.
Stone had his own prison term — a 40-month sentence for lying to Congress — commuted by Mr Trump in 2020. He too claimed to have been the victim of a political witch-hunt.
On his radio show on the weekend, Stone said he had "great sympathy for President Hernandez", who he argued was set up by the Biden administration to help Honduras's political left.
"He was … framed to get him out of the way for the narco-Marxist regime to take power in Honduras," Stone said.
Roger Stone gave Donald Trump a letter from the jailed former Honduran president. (Reuters: Cheney Orr, file)
He told his radio show audience he had given Mr Trump an "extraordinarily compelling" letter from Hernandez on Friday. A few hours later, Mr Trump announced the pardon.
In the letter, published by Axios, Hernandez wrote that he and Mr Trump had been fighting a "shared fight, for secure borders, against drugs".
He praised Mr Trump's efforts to secure peace in the Middle East and he criticised Venezuela's Maduro administration, which Mr Trump has also been highly critical of.
And he said the US went after him "because the Biden-Harris DOJ pursued a political agenda to empower its ideological allies in Honduras".
Asked on Tuesday about his decision, Mr Trump characterised the case against Hernandez quite differently to how it was heard in court.
"They had some drugs being sold in their country and, because he was the president, they went after him," Mr Trump said.
"That was a Biden horrible witch-hunt."
He said "a lot of people in Honduras" asked him to pardon Hernandez.
"And I did it, and I feel very good about it."
Weighing in on Honduran election
Mr Trump's decision to pardon Hernandez was first announced on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In the same post, he endorsed Tito Asfura, a candidate from Hernandez's right-wing party, in Honduras's presidential election.
He also suggested that American funding for Honduras could be contingent on the election result. Government data shows the US has provided about $US200 million in assistance to Honduras annually in recent years.
In his post, Mr Trump wrote:
"If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive.
"If he doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is."
The post went up two days before Hondurans went to the polls on Sunday. It raised questions about whether Mr Trump was using the pardon to try to boost his preferred candidate's chances.
Tito Asfura is Donald Trump's preferred candidate in the Honduran presidential race. (AP: Moises Castillo)
At the time of writing, the results are too close to call, but the centrist Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla had a slim lead.
It prompted Mr Trump to post again, claiming without evidence that Honduras was "trying to change the results of their election".
Some Honduran political leaders are asking Mr Trump to butt out.
"Mr Donald Trump, we are not intimidated by you," former left-wing president Manuel Zelaya, the husband of current president Xiomara Castro, wrote on X in Spanish.
"If we survived the narco dictatorship, do you think a tweet of yours is going to break us?"
The election result could determine whether Honduran authorities take their own action to prosecute Hernandez.
But for now he is still in the US, according to the lawyer who represented him at trial, Renato Stabile.
He told Reuters that it was not safe for him to return to Honduras, because cartel criminals could try to kill him.
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