Trump frees ex-Honduran president from prison as country awaits knife-edge election result

Original article by Tiago Rogero South America correspondent

A former president of Honduras who was convicted of drug trafficking has walked free from a US prison after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump, as the country’s presidential election remained on a knife edge with the US-backed candidate leading by 515 votes.

Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”, was released from a West Virginia prison after Trump’s intervention, Hernández’s wife confirmed on Tuesday.

It came as Trump steps up his “war on drugs” with airstrikes on alleged traffickers in the Caribbean, and a massive US naval force off the coast of Venezuela.

There has been an extraordinary level of US interference in the Honduran election. Trump threw his support behind Hernández’s ally Nasry “Tito” Asfura, saying Washington’s support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.

On Tuesday, Trump again intervened, alleging without evidence that electoral officials were “trying to change” the result of Sunday’s vote and warned: “If they do, there will be hell to pay!”

The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted at about midday on Monday. The electoral council said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.

When the release of results was suspended on Monday, Asfura was on 39.91%, closely followed by another rightwing candidate, Salvador Nasralla, on 39.89%. Rixi Moncada, the candidate for the leftwing ruling party, was trailing in a distant third place with 19.16% of the vote.

As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.

“God is faithful and never fails! Yesterday, Monday 1 December 2025, we lived a day we will never forget. After almost four years of pain, waiting and difficult trials, my husband, Juan Orlando Hernández, became a free man AGAIN, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” she wrote.

Axios reported that in a letter to Trump in October, Hernández had claimed that he had been “targeted by the Biden-Harris administration not for any wrongdoing, but for political reasons.”

Hernández had been held at the federal Hazelton prison in West Virginia and is now in a “safe place”, according to his wife.

Trump’s pardon has baffled many observers, who have questioned why the US president has used his “war on drugs” to justify overthrowing Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, while simultaneously freeing a man convicted of such crimes.

In Honduras, the pardon has been viewed as yet another attempt by the US president to interfere in the election.

Moncada accused Trump of “interventionism” and of “imperial, direct foreign interference” in the electoral process. She served as finance minister under the current president, Xiomara Castro, who could not run again because presidential mandates are limited to a single term.

Before the election, Trump had claimed Moncada was a communist and that her victory would hand the country to “Maduro and his narco-terrorists”.

Nasralla, an experienced politician and TV host who served as Castro’s vice-president before breaking away to launch his own presidential attempt, was labelled by Trump as a “borderline communist” who was running only to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.

The electoral court has up to 30 days to announce the result.

For many, the suspension of the vote counts has revived traumatic memories of the 2017 election, when Hernández ran for a second term, after a court struck down a constitutional ban on re-election.

Early results showed Nasralla ahead, but after a “blackout” – marked by violent protests in which dozens were killed – Hernández emerged ahead and, a week after the election, was recognised by the US as the winner.

Now, after a campaign in which virtually all the candidates alleged electoral fraud, all three contenders have voiced concern over the delay.

“Let’s not keep the country waiting, on edge,” said Asfura.