ISTANBUL

Former Honduran first lady Ana Garcia de Hernandez praised US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his decision to pardon her husband, ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez, over the "crime of drug trafficking."

"Yesterday, Monday, December 1, 2025, we lived a day we will never forget. After almost four years of pain, waiting, and difficult trials, my husband, Juan Orlando Hernandez, RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump," Hernandez said on the US social media company X’s platform.

"Thank you, Mr. President, for giving us hope again and for recognizing a truth we always knew."

"To all the friends who supported us, to those who never stopped praying, defending the truth, and believing in justice: this miracle is yours as well," she added.

She further said that the truth always prevails and justice always arrives, citing the Bible.

On Nov, 28, Trump announced that he would grant a pardon to Hernandez, who served as president from 2014–2022, overturning his 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and related firearms offenses.

Hernandez had been convicted in March 2024 by a federal jury in New York of conspiring to import over 400 tons of cocaine into the US, using his power as president to facilitate the drug trade.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump argued that Hernandez had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

Hernandez was released from a prison in West Virginia on Dec. 1. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, sharply criticized the pardon, saying that Hernandez had led “one of the largest criminal enterprises ever convicted in US courts” and that Trump’s decision, issued less than a year into the sentence, showed he had no concern for combating narcotrafficking.