Honduran ruling party candidate says Trump interfering in election

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Tegucigalpa — The ruling party candidate in Sunday's Honduran presidential election accused US President Donald Trump of "interventionist" meddling after he endorsed her right-wing opponent and said he would be pardoning an ex-president.

"There is no doubt that these are two concrete actions, three days before the elections, that are totally interventionist," leftist candidate Rixi Moncada of incumbent Xiomara Castro's Libre Party told a press conference on Saturday.

Trump on Wednesday endorsed right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura, one of a trio of frontrunners in the race, saying the two could work together against the region's "narcocommunists."

On Friday, he went further, threatening to cut US support if his preferred candidate loses -- and making a surprise announcement that he would be pardoning ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The former Honduran leader, from the same party as Asfura, is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States after being convicted last year of drug trafficking charges.

Hernandez, who led the Central American nation from 2014 to 2022, was accused by US prosecutors of facilitating the import of some 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

He was extradited to the United States just weeks after leaving office.

Trump's move to pardon Hernandez drew rebukes from his US political opponents and even Colombia's president, as it comes amid a controversial US anti-drug trafficking operation in Latin America.

That campaign has seen over 80 people killed in strikes in international waters, in what experts have criticised as extrajudicial killings.

Trump said in his social media post on Friday that Hernandez "has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly," without elaborating.