Guatemala returns newspaper founder to jail in a case decried by advocates
Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora was returned to jail Monday after an appellate court sided with prosecutors and withdrew his house arrest.
Zamora, the founder of El Periódico newspaper, had spent more than two years behind bars awaiting trial before a judge granted him house arrest in October. Prosecutors immediately appealed and won rulings in November and again on Monday.
Zamora, 68, had been imprisoned since July 2022, when he was charged with money laundering, amounting to around $38,000, and in June 2023 he was sentenced to six years in prison. The sentence was overturned by an appeals court because of errors in the process.
Zamora and free press advocates maintain that the prosecution is revenge for the investigative work of his newspaper against the administration of ex-President Alejandro Giammattei.
President Bernardo Arévalo, Giammattei's successor, criticized the prosecution Monday before the court's latest ruling.
'It is an absolutely spurious case and reveals the worst of the crisis in our judicial system and shows the strategies of criminalizing that the Attorney General's Office is using against those fighting corruption,' Arévalo said.
Prosecutors had argued that Zamora posed a flight risk, despite the fact that he had abided by the rules of his home confinement since being released in October.
'Here I am, I've demonstrated that I come to hearings and I go to put my fingerprints in the prosecutor's office,' Zamora said after the decision as police handcuffed him and prepared to return him to prison.
Advocacy organization Amnesty International condemned the court's decision and called for Zamora's immediate release.
'He is being jailed again today only for his investigative journalism and for denouncing corruption,' said Ana Piquer, Amnesty's Latin America director.
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