Guatemalan court revokes house arrest granted to renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora

A Guatemalan appeals court on Tuesday overturned the house arrest granted recently to journalist José Rubén Zamora, recognized for his denunciations against corruption and who has been in prison for almost two years for money laundering.

The Guatemalan Special Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption appealed a court’s decision last May to grant him house arrest so that he could be released.

This substitute measure revoked one of the two prison orders against the journalist for two different cases that the prosecutor’s office is pursuing against the communicator, and for which he never left prison.

Zamora, 67, has been in prison since July 2022 when he was accused by the Public Ministry of money laundering, for an amount of about $38,000, and in June of last year he was sentenced to six years in prison. The sentence was also suspended by a court decision due to errors in the process.

The journalist has denied the accusations and has questioned that at the trial he was not allowed to provide evidence in his favor to clarify the origin of the money.

In their ruling, the appeals court magistrates argue that Zamora’s defense did not present means to demonstrate that the circumstances that motivated the initial prison order had changed.

When the judge in the case ordered his imprisonment two years ago, he said he did so because Zamora had a means of communication that he could use to obstruct the investigation. The newspaper El Periódico, of which the journalist was founder, disappeared a year ago.

The appeals chamber also used a procedural formality as an argument – ​​due to lack of precise information – when questioning that in the audio recorded during the hearing where house arrest was granted “it is not heard that the defense, as well as any of the procedural subjects … indicate which court was the one that issued the preventive detention order and the date of the same.”

Consequently, he ordered the court that issued the measure in favor of Zamora to carry out some procedures and then make a decision again regarding the request for house arrest instead of jail.

“What the Court did is pure harassment, it is a psychological war by the prosecution and the plaintiffs against my father; They demonstrate his desperation for continuing to delay the process in a malicious way,” said José Zamora Marroquín, the journalist’s son.

Zamora Marroquín explained that the resolution does nothing more than order the court to carry out some additional formalities. “We know that sooner rather than later my father will be declared innocent and released,” he defended.

“What is most strange is that in cases of major corruption, the prosecution does not appeal decisions in favor of the corrupt, but when it comes to criminalizing justice operators or journalists, they do appeal everything,” questioned the son of the journalist.

Several international organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Inter-American Press Association and others have spoken out in support of the journalist and denounced that he is being criminalized for investigating corruption.

Zamora was president of the Guatemalan newspaper El Periódico, a morning newspaper specialized in anti-corruption complaints that disappeared after his arrest.

The journalist considers that the media’s publications about cases of corruption in the justice system and during the government of former president Alejandro Giammattei motivated the prosecution’s persecution against him. Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who is sanctioned in the United States for undermining democracy and the fight against corruption, was appointed by Giammattei.

Zamora acknowledged in a recent interview with AP from his cell that his prison conditions had improved after President Bernardo Arévalo took power last January.

The president has maintained a confrontation with the prosecutor Porras, whom he has asked to resign, since during the electoral period the head of the Public Ministry began a judicial attack against the party of the then candidate, against Arévalo himself and against the electoral process so that was annulled.

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