The previous president of Honduras thanked President Trump on Wednesday in his first message since being pardoned and launched only one yr into his 45-year jail time period for enabling drug traffickers to flood the U.S. with 400 tons of cocaine.
“THANK GOD! All glory be to Him. I’m a free man,” Juan Orlando Hernández wrote on social media Wednesday night. “I said it as I left my home, I said it as I was wrongfully convicted, and I will say it again now that I have my liberty. I am innocent.”
The 2-term Honduran president went on to specific “profound gratitude” to Trump “for having the courage to defend justice at a moment when a weaponized system refused to acknowledge the truth. You reviewed the facts, recognized the injustice and acted with conviction. You changed my life, sir, and I will never forget it.”
Jorge Cabrera/Getty Pictures
Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez is escorted by police to be extradited to the US on April 21, 2022 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Photograph by Jorge Cabrera/Getty Pictures)
Hernández served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 and was indicted upon leaving workplace. He exited U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia on Monday a free man, regardless of his conviction final yr for shielding traffickers in return for bribes. Among the many huge array of proof introduced at Hernández’s trial was his alleged brag that he needed to “shove drugs up the nose of gringos.”
On Wednesday, Hernández claimed his trial was “rigged” by the “deep state” of the Biden administration.
“There was no real evidence, only the accusations of criminals who sought revenge. Yet the truth of my innocence prevailed,” he stated, thanking Trump for setting the “injustice” proper.
Trump introduced his determination to pardon Hernández on social media final week, contending the previous president had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.” Some speculated {that a} fawning letter Hernández wrote to Trump on Oct. 28, the previous chief’s personal birthday, influenced Trump’s determination, as did intense lobbying by Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone.
The retracted punishment contrasted markedly with Trump’s present Caribbean bombardment of boats crusing from Venezuela on the mere suspicion of transporting medication to the U.S. The Pentagon stated Monday it had killed 82 “narco-terrorists” in 21 strikes inside the previous three months, as administration officers defended allegedly capturing survivors of a Sept. 2 assault whereas they clung defenseless to boat wreckage within the open water.
Venezuela shouldn’t be even the supply of most medication coming from the south, in line with The New York Instances. Although some cocaine passes by way of, not one of the fentanyl inflicting an overdose scourge within the U.S. does. That reportedly will get transported by way of the Pacific Ocean.
