Why has Trump pardoned Honduras’s drug trafficker ex-president?

特朗普为何赦免了洪都拉斯前总统、毒品走私犯?

The Global Story

2025-12-03

26 分钟
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President Donald Trump has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking and weapons offences. It was only last year that Hernández was convicted in a New York courtroom of being part of a huge drug trafficking conspiracy, after being extradited to the US. Prosecutors said the operation flooded America with cocaine and turned Honduras into a “narco-state”. But Trump has claimed the investigation was a Biden administration “set up”, and Hernández is now a free man. As the Trump administration ramps up its military threats against Latin American drug cartels, including multiple strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, why has it pardoned Hernández? Will Grant reports. Producer: Xandra Ellin, Hannah Moore and Viv Jones Executive producer: James Shield Sound engineer: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins (Photo: Juan Orlando Hernandez being escorted by US agents for extradition in 2022. Credit: Fredy Rodriguez/Reuters)
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  • This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

  • Earlier this week, the former president of Honduras was released from a prison in West Virginia.

  • Juan Orlando Hernandez was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US for drug trafficking.

  • In court, prosecutors had accused him of, quote, paving a cocaine superhighway to the United States.

  • He's now been released, having served less than two years of that sentence.

  • He was freed following a pardon from the President of the United States.

  • And all this came about at the same time as Hondurans were electing a new leader.

  • Honduras is a country of a little more than 10 million people in Central America.

  • It's an important transit point for both cocaine and migrants

  • as they move north from South America towards the United States.

  • Two things which make it a place of strategic interest to the US.

  • From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington DC.

  • And I'm Tristan Redmond in London.

  • And today on The Global Story,

  • Why is President Trump pardoning a convicted drug trafficker

  • while claiming to fight a war on drugs in Venezuela?

  • Will, could you introduce yourself for us, please?

  • I'm Will Grant.

  • I'm the BBC's Mexico Central America and Caribbean correspondent.

  • And in this instance, very much the Central America correspondent.