Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, has walked free after President Donald Trump pardoned the man once characterised as the key figure in a drug trafficking scheme that flooded America with over 400 tonnes of cocaine.
Trump has said that Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a US court, is a victim of political persecution and has been treated very harshly and unfairly.
The pardon has surprised some experts, given the seriousness of the crime and the administration's promised crackdown on illegal drugs flowing into the US.
Here is a look at Hernández's political career and crimes, and why Trump may have pardoned him.
400 tonnes of cocaine and a $1m bribe from El Chapo
Hernández first ran for president of Honduras, a country of 10 million people, in 2013 as the candidate for the conservative National Party. He ran again in 2017, in an election marred by fraud allegations and violent protests.
Throughout his two terms, he maintained a cordial relationship with the US. Former President Barack Obama called him one of the excellent partners on the migrant-children crisis, and Trump backed him as the winner of the disputed 2017 vote.
But Hernández's fortunes began to unravel in 2019.
US federal prosecutors accused him of accepting a $1m bribe from notorious drug lord Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán for his first presidential campaign in exchange for protecting narcotics routes through Honduras.
The allegations surfaced in a separate case involving his brother, Juan Antonio Tony Hernández, who was arrested in Miami in 2018 on charges of smuggling cocaine into the US. At the time, the then-president denied any involvement in his brother's crimes.
Tony Hernández was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.
But the end of his brother's trial marked only the beginning of the ex-president's legal troubles.
Shortly after leaving office in 2022, he was arrested and extradited to the US on drug-trafficking and related weapons charges.
Hernández's federal trial lasted three weeks in 2024.
US prosecutors argued that he was a central figure in a more than 18-year-long drug-trafficking scheme that funnelled over 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US - equivalent to roughly 4.5 billion individual doses.
The people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences, said then-attorney general Merrick Garland.
Prosecutors detailed how Hernández abused office by shielding drug traffickers armed with machine guns and grenade launchers. In exchange, he received millions of dollars to fuel his political campaigns.
Multiple branches of the state were involved, including the Honduran National Police, who protected cocaine shipments as they moved through Honduras to the US for distribution, prosecutors said.
In some cases, the drug traffickers associated with Hernández committed violent crimes and murders to quell rival gangs and grow their enterprise, they said.
During sentencing, Hernández insisted he was the victim of political persecution.
Trump announced the pardon on Friday in a Truth Social post, writing that, according to many people that I greatly respect, Hernández had been unfairly treated by prosecutors.
In the same post, he also endorsed Tito Asfura for president of Honduras ahead of the upcoming election. Asfura ran under the same National Party ticket as Hernández.
The punditry and the political implications of this pardon remain a topic of ongoing discussion.
