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As the United States continued its military campaign against what the Trump administration calls “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean, President Donald Trump announced he would pardon a former Honduran president notorious for his involvement in the US drug trade.
Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison after being convicted of conspiring to distribute more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US.
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During an exchange with reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Hernandez had been “set up” by former US President Joe Biden’s administration. “If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life,” Trump said, without providing evidence of the alleged “set-up”.
Trump inaccurately stated the nature of the former Honduran president’s arrest and conviction: the US did not try Hernandez after his presidency because he sold drugs in Honduras, but because he was deeply involved in the transit of illicit drugs into the US.
The situation is rare but not without precedent.
The White House framed Trump’s planned pardon as an effort to correct a miscarriage of justice. At a December 1 press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticised Hernandez’s three-week jury trial as being scant on evidence.
After his conviction, a judge denied Hernandez’s motion for a new trial.
What was Hernandez convicted of?
Hernandez’s presidency ran from January 2014 to January 2022, during which he told US officials he was working to combat drug trafficking. Trump praised his efforts in 2019.
In April 2022, the US government indicted and extradited Hernandez to the US on drug- and weapons-trafficking charges. On June 26, 2024, District Judge P Kevin Castel sentenced him to 540 months in prison and 60 months of supervised release for cocaine importation and related weapons offences.
The US Justice Department said Hernandez had financed his political career with drug trafficking proceeds and had used his presidential authority to traffic hundreds of tonnes of cocaine to the US.
At one point, the department said, Hernandez declared that he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos”.
The prosecution included testimony from witnesses, some of them former traffickers. Documents presented in the case said Hernandez facilitated the importation into the US of more than 400 tonnes of cocaine — equivalent to about 4.5 billion doses — working with coconspirators armed with machineguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers.
The Honduran military and the police carried out orders from criminal groups, according to witnesses in Hernandez’s trial.
US prosecutors said Hernandez ended up receiving millions of dollars of drug proceeds from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organisations in Honduras, Mexico and other countries. He then used those bribes to fuel his rise in Honduran politics, which enabled him to protect his co-conspirators, prosecutors said.
Hernandez’s brother, Juan Antonio Hernandez Alvarado, a former member of the Honduran National Congress, received protection from the government under Hernandez’s leadership. Hernandez also received millions of dollars from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, prosecutors said.
How was the US able to try a foreign head of government?
Trump said the US singled out Hernandez because he was the president of Honduras. It is unusual but not unprecedented for a foreign president to be prosecuted.
Under international law, a sitting head of state or head of government enjoys “complete immunity” from prosecution in the courts of another country, said Anthony Clark Arend, a Georgetown University professor of government and foreign service who specialises in international law.
However, the restrictions are looser for former heads of state. Hernandez was weeks out of office at his US extradition.
A former head of state or government is immune from another country’s prosecution if it is about actions carried out in their official capacity, Arend said. But the US was able to prosecute Hernandez because drug trafficking has historically not been considered an “official” duty.
Because he was facing drug-trafficking charges, “there would be no impediment under international law to trying him, a former president, for those charges”, Arend said.
Hernandez’s prosecution “seemed to have legitimacy both in the US and in Honduras”, said Daniel Sabet, a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University who studies Central America. “Outside of his core supporters, the arrest was seen as legitimate.”
Such prosecutions are rare but not unprecedented, most notably the case of Manuel Noriega of Panama.
In 1989, President George HW Bush sent US forces into Panama to seize Noriega, the country’s leader, after his indictment by a US grand jury on drug-related charges. (Noriega’s status as head of government was contested in Panama at the time, and his status was not recognised by the US.)
After turning himself in and being extradited to the US state of Florida, Noriega was tried and convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The prosecution was upheld by a three-judge appeals court panel in 1997, turning aside Noriega’s argument that his position as head of state should have preempted his prosecution.
Sabet also cited the case of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko, who was arrested in the US in 1999, charged with 53 counts of money laundering. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in federal prison.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
