Former Guatemalan prosecutor Virginia Laparra served a year in prison on Thursday after denouncing a judge for leaking information about a classified corruption case.
Laparra, sentenced to four years For abuse of authority, she has become a symbol of the persecution of judicial officials in Guatemala and Amnesty International has declared her a prisoner of conscience.
“One year after his arrest, it is evident that the multiple arbitrariness and irregularities in the actions of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary in this case are the result of the authorities’ obsession with punishing all the people who have contributed to the fight against corruption and impunity,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International director for the Americas, said Thursday in a press release calling for his release.
In turn, Laparra’s defense lawyers denounced that the former prosecutor is ill and that she has been denied medical attention. They added that she needs emergency surgery but the Guatemalan Social Security Institute would have set an appointment only for May.
Laparra was a member of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity when he denounced Judge Lesther Castellanos Rodas for leaking information on a corruption case to a lawyer friend who worked for the government and aspired to be a Constitutional Court magistrate.
Following the complaint, Castellanos Rodas was administratively sanctioned, but a Court revoked the sanction.
Castellanos and his lawyer friend have said they are innocent and filed two complaints against Laparra supported by a radical right-wing foundation that defends soldiers accused of war crimes already accused of corruption.
Laparra’s defense argued that the law empowers anyone to report a fact and presented more than 200 cases in which prosecutors denounced judges, but the evidence was not taken into account.
Although Laparra’s prison sentence was commutable, a new arrest warrant requested by Castellanos Rodas with the support of the Prosecutor’s Office, for allegedly revealing information from another case, keeps the former prosecutor in prison.
Castellanos Rodas was appointed by pro-government deputies and allies of the Rapporteur Congress against Torture.
During the government of Alejandro Giammattei, more than 30 justice operators have gone into exile denouncing criminalization by the Attorney General Consuelo Porras, close to Giammattei, for the investigations into corruption and crimes against humanity that they carried out.
This earned Porras visa withdrawal and sanctions by the US government. The United States and the European Union have denounced the deterioration of the rule of law in Guatemala.
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