Nearly eight months after being pardoned by US President Donald Trump, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández returned to his country on Sunday, where he will now have to answer for his actions in court for embezzlement of public funds.
The former president, who governed Honduras from 2014 to 2022, arrived aboard a private flight at Palmerola airport, 60 km northwest of Tegucigalpa, where his family welcomed him on the tarmac, while dozens of supporters waited for him outside the terminal, AFP noted.
Sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, he was pardoned in November 2025 by Donald Trump and released in December of the same year.
His pardon coincided with the American president’s intervention in the presidential election in Honduras.
Donald Trump had supported conservative entrepreneur Nasry Asfura, a member of the same party as Juan Orlando Hernández, who won the election. The American president had threatened to reduce aid to Honduras, the poorest and most violent country in Central America, if his favorite did not win.
“We will always be very grateful to President Trump for this courageous decision,” Ana García, the wife of the former right-wing president, told AFP.
The latter got off the plane wearing a blue shirt and jeans, then knelt down to pray. He then went by minibus inside the airport to complete immigration formalities.
Accused of having embezzled two million dollars in public funds to finance his presidential campaign in 2013, Mr. Hernández, 57, will appear in court on August 3. He declares himself “innocent”.
In exchange for his commitment to appear voluntarily, a judge suspended his arrest warrant, which his family and supporters took advantage of to organize a welcoming procession and religious ceremonies.
“We are very happy and very moved” to welcome him, Eva Amador, 56, one of the former president’s supporters, told AFP, while brandishing a banner bearing a message of thanks to Donald Trump.
His return is “a test for judicial independence,” Ana María Méndez, director for Central America of the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs (WOLA), told AFP.
“Drugs in the noses of gringos”
Two years after his extradition, Mr. Hernández was judged in 2024 guilty of participating in and protecting a network that shipped more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States between 2004 and 2022.
In return, he allegedly received millions of dollars from the cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel led by the famous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
According to U.S. prosecutors, during his presidency, Honduras became a “narco-state,” a “superhighway” through which much of Colombia’s drug trafficking to the United States passed.
During the trial, a witness claimed to have heard the former president boast that he was going to “put the drugs in the noses of the gringos” and that they would “not even realize it”.
Donald Trump had justified his pardon by a “horrible witch hunt orchestrated” by his predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden.
The man his compatriots nickname “JOH”, in reference to his initials, became in 2014, at the age of 45, the youngest president of Honduras. His re-election in 2018, tainted by suspicions of fraud, was contested by large popular demonstrations that were harshly repressed.
