‘Everyone is terrified’: Guatemalan journalist jailed for decades

One of Guatemala’s best-known journalists is facing up to 40 years in prison on Wednesday in a case that has raised concerns about the strain on democracy in Central America’s biggest economy.

José Rubén Zamora said he believed the charges against him of money laundering, blackmail and influence were filed in retaliation for stories published by his newspaper that alleged corruption by the government of President Alejandro Giammattei I went.

Days before his final hearing, Zamora told the Financial Times: “What the (president) has done to me is terrible. . . (but) I’m glad he put me here to do my job properly. Giammattei’s office denied any role in Zamora’s case.

Zamora, a businessman and journalist who is lodged in the isolation wing of a prison on the outskirts of Guatemala City, won international acclaim for his work exposing corruption since the country’s civil war.

Zamora has been the target of attacks, raids and threats for decades. But in May he said political and economic pressures made it impossible to continue and he closed El Periodico in 1996 after the country signed a peace accord to end its 36-year civil war. He started the newspaper.

The detention and possible conviction of one of the country’s most high-profile journalists has sparked fear among Guatemalan journalists, with more than 20 fleeing the country in a year, according to the journalism collective. ,NoNosCalran (“They won’t silence us”).

Zamora’s case comes as media members across the region continue to face physical and legal threats, prompting major outlets such as El Salvador’s El Faro and Nicaragua’s La Prensa to relocate abroad. Used to be.

A decision in Zamora’s case could come two weeks before the presidential and congressional elections.

“Everyone is terrified,” Zamora said of the country’s press corps. He spoke from the prison, where he is kept separate from other prisoners, at an army base surrounded by a lush forest. Zamora has only one hour a day outside his cell in a small courtyard.

Giammattei has insisted that there is a free Press It has underlined its importance for the construction of democracy in Guatemala. A spokesman for him dismissed any suggestion Zamora was involved in the case, saying the executive branch is separate from the judiciary.

“Guatemala guarantees and works for the free exercise of journalism,” the spokesman said. “We counted over 6,000 critical stories about the government of Guatemala and there is no censorship, so publishing unfounded claims is an irresponsible decision.”

Giammattei and other political leaders have insisted that the case against Zamora is about how he handled the newspaper’s finances, not the stories. “Does freedom of the press mean immunity for his acts which are acts done not as a journalist but as a businessman?” Giammattei told Colombian radio earlier this year.

Zamora and rights groups say the case is politically motivated and riddled with procedural irregularities. He was arrested within days of the original complaint, and the case could only be wrapped up in a year in a country with widespread impunity and where cases often dragged on for years. Prosecutors have asked for more time than the standard sentence because he “showed disrespect to the officers”.

The country’s attorney-general and chief anti-corruption prosecutor are in Washington List of undemocratic and corrupt actors,

Prosecutors are also pursuing cases against several of Zamora’s defense lawyers, journalists and family members, including last week asking El Periodico to shut down now through July 2022 all stories published by its nine journalists .

“This is something you would expect in Cuba, not a democratic country,” said Juan Papier, acting deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch. “There is pressure to destroy the free press in Guatemala through various means.”

Many journalists in Guatemala said they felt they had to be careful before publishing news. In March, the US embassy in Guatemala said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of the El Periodico journalists’ investigation.

Journalist Sonny Figueroa, founder of the Guatemalan news site Vox Populi, said there are still important journalists doing essential work in the country, but they faced harassment, death threats and a criminal complaint made by the subjects of the corruption story. He and his reporting partner Marvin del Cid had already temporarily left the country twice. “We have one foot out and one foot in,” he said.

The campaign to prosecute journalists intensified after the state launched cases against former officials who investigated corruption with the UN-backed commission known as the CICIG. The CICIG filed more than 120 cases and helped bring down former President Otto Pérez Molina, but its mandate was not renewed by the former government in 2019.

Since then, many of those involved in trying the cases have been themselves prosecuted, and more than 30 former justice system officials have left the country, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Claudia Samoya, founder of the non-profit Human Rights Defenders Security Unit in Guatemala, called the action “vengeance politics”.

Samoyoa said prosecutors are increasingly using laws meant to combat organized crime to pursue journalists. “The real intention of all these cases is to nab the journalist. , , It is very easy to put in jail, difficult to get out of jail,” he said.

Zamora, who spends his days reading through stacks of books ranging from Jorge Luis Borges novels to Winston Churchill biographies, said he thought Guatemala and neighboring authoritarian Nicaragua were like “twin brothers”.

“We are at a high risk . . . of becoming a tyrannical, fascist dictatorship,” he said.