Former President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras, who just nine months ago was serving a 45-year sentence in the United States on drug trafficking and weapons charges before being pardoned by President Trump, was cleared of the remaining criminal charges against him in Honduras on Tuesday.
A Honduran court dismissed money laundering and fraud charges stemming from Mr. Hernández’s first presidential campaign more than a decade ago, removing the last legal obstacle hanging over the former president and effectively making him a free man, according to Carlos Silva, a spokesman for the country’s judiciary.
Mr. Hernández did not “authorize, manage, did not increase his wealth or assets, and there were no core legal elements of the criminal offense of money laundering,” Mr. Silva told reporters after the hearing, adding that the court had issued a definitive dismissal for money laundering and fraud charges.
Large crowds greeted Mr. Hernández on the streets in the capital, Tegucigalpa, after the decision, chanting their support, according to videos posted on Mr. Hernández’s Facebook page. In one of the videos, he disembarks from a white Jeep, a bodyguard parting the crowd so that he can climb on top of a pickup to address his supporters, a microphone and speakers at the ready.
“I want to be frank with you, I am hurt by what my family has suffered,” Mr. Hernández, who has repeatedly maintained his innocence, said in a short speech. “Those who set up this operation not only wanted to see me exiled forever from Honduras, to never return, but they were also determined to leave my family literally out on the street.”
“This chapter of political persecution has now ended,” Mr. Hernandez added.
Mr. Hernández, who served two consecutive terms as president from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in 2022 following charges of operating his country as a “narco-state” and saying that he would “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the United States with cocaine. Two years ago, he was found guilty in a U.S. federal court and sentenced to 45 years in prison. But after his family and U.S. right-wing political operatives, including Roger Stone, lobbied for his release, President Trump formally pardoned Mr. Hernandez on Dec. 1.
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President Trump’s decision caused shock waves not only among Hondurans, but also the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous founder of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” to allow cocaine shipments to pass through the Central American nation, and said he played a role in “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
But after his U.S. conviction was dropped, Mr. Hernández still faced an uphill legal battle in Honduras. There, he was the target of a sprawling anti-corruption investigation, known as the Pandora case, which accused lawmakers and high-ranking politicians of diverting public funds meant for social programs, agriculture and poverty reduction, and funneling the money into political campaigns — including his own 2013 run.
He returned to Honduras in July, on a private flight that landed at Palmerola International Airport, northwest of Tegucigalpa, where he was greeted by several family members.
Mr. Hernández’s time in office was marred by corruption scandals and allegations of ties to drug traffickers, suspicions that deepened after his brother, a former lawmaker, was arrested in the United States on drug-trafficking charges in 2018.
Mr. Hernández was also at the center of a contested presidential election in 2017 that was laced with allegations of fraud. He secured a second term nonetheless. His victory set off protests across the country, followed by a violent crackdown by the military that left nearly two dozen people dead.
Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting.
The post Honduran Court Clears Former President Pardoned by Trump appeared first on New York Times.
