Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence in the United States for drug trafficking, has been released from prison following a presidential pardon issued by President Donald Trump.

Mr Hernández walked out of the high-security USP Hazelton facility in West Virginia on Monday.

The former leader was convicted in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S. and possessing machine guns.

Prosecutors in New York accused him of turning Honduras into a “narco-state,” accepting millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers and protecting cartels while in office between 2014 and 2022.

He was also ordered to pay an $8 million fine.

Mr Trump, in a social media post announcing the pardon, claimed Mr Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly,” describing the case against him as a “Biden administration set-up.”

“They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” the U.S. president said while defending the move.

Mr Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, expressed gratitude to Trump on Tuesday, celebrating her husband’s return to freedom.

Mr Hernández was extradited to the U.S. in April 2022 to face charges linked to what prosecutors described as a violent, years-long drug-smuggling conspiracy responsible for moving hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into the United States.

His release comes at a politically sensitive moment in Honduras, where the country is currently locked in a “technical tie” as it awaits the outcome of a new presidential election.