(AFP) – Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez is not planning any immediate return to his country due to threats for his life, his wife told AFP, after the former leader received a surprise pardon from President Donald Trump. From her home in Tegucigalpa, Ana Garcia thanked the US president, saying the pardon put an end to an “injustice” that she blamed in part on former Democratic President Joe Biden.
“He’s not thinking about returning to public or political life, but rather a private life where we can have time as a family and return to our professions,” she said. They are both lawyers. “The situation for him isn’t easy due to the insecurity, the threats against his life, and the constant hate speech this government has directed against him,” Garcia said.
Juan Orlando Hernandez was released from a West Virginia prison on Monday after Trump’s pardon and just days after Honduras held a presidential election. He had been sentenced last year to more than four decades behind bars. “We’re just now processing the news. I hadn’t been able to see him, to speak freely with him,” Garcia added.
Hernandez was convicted of helping to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States starting in 2004, long before he became president. During his two terms at the helm of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, Hernandez was thought of as a loyal ally in the US-led war on drugs. But prosecutors charged Hernandez with using drug money to enrich himself, finance his political campaigns and commit electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 elections.
In March 2024, he was convicted and in June that year sentenced to 45 years behind bars. Hernandez “has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” said Trump, whose administration has killed dozens of alleged but unproven drug smugglers in boat strikes in Latin America.
Garcia called the pardon a “surprise” after the former president sent a letter to Trump, who had also received a formal legal request for the pardon. “We weren’t expecting a response. I don’t know why it came out the way it did, but President Trump chose to express his will that way, and I am grateful for what he did for my husband, for bringing justice in the face of a terrible injustice,” she said.
© 2024 AFP
