Transcript (en)

Four years ago, Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández left his country in disgrace, extradited to the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking. Now he's back, triumphant, after a presidential pardon from Donald Trump last December, who said that Hernández had been treated very harshly and unfairly in what he described as a Biden administration setup. A brief prayer on the tarmac with his family and a rally with his supporters. This is not only a vindication for Juan Orlando and his family, but also a vindication for my beloved Honduran people who have suffered so much. Awaiting him still, a corruption charges in his homeland, but now under a new president from his own party. Because it was a political maneuver from the former government. But actually, at this point, the other people who are related in that trial, most of them they already got the charges dismissed So I hope it going to be the same for us because all the legal grounds say so Hernandez was Honduran president from 2014 to 2022 US prosecutors accused him of facilitating the trafficking of hundreds of thousands of kilos of cocaine into the US. They said he bragged that he'd stuffed the drugs right up the noses of the gringos. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. After President Trump freed him, critics point out that he'd handled Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, another autocratic president accused of drug trafficking, very differently, swooping into Venezuela to capture him and detaining him in the US. Maduro is from the left and Andes from the right. Some legal experts believe that eventually his case will be dismissed in Honduras too. For his supporters, that's justice being done. For many others who cheered his extradition, it's a huge step backwards for a country in which impunity is already rife. John Holman, Al Jazeera.