The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) accused Guatemalan justice on Wednesday of wanting to “intimidate and harass” journalists who investigate corruption cases. CPJ calls in a statement to cease “all (judicial) investigations against journalists and employees” of the opposition newspaper The newspaper and the “unconditional” release of its president, José Rubén Zamora, 66 years old.
José Rubén Zamora has been in prison for eight months awaiting trial for the crimes of money laundering and blackmail.
On Tuesday, a judge opened a new criminal proceeding against José Rubén Zamora, this time for “concert to obstruct justice” during the judicial investigation opened against him in 2021 for money laundering.
The judge also accepted the prosecutor’s request to open an investigation against several journalists fromThe newspaper, accused of “disinformation” in articles related to the process initiated against the president of their newspaper.
“A new attempt to criminalize freedom of expression”
For CPJ, legal action against The newspaper They are “a clear attempt by prosecutors to intimidate and harass a newspaper and journalists who work tirelessly to denounce corruption” in the Central American country. “They won’t silence us!” proclaimed The newspaper in an editorial published Wednesday on his website.
The Guatemalan College of Journalists also denounced the judicial investigations opened against the newspaper’s journalists, denouncing “a new attempt to criminalize freedom of expression.”
The trial for money laundering and blackmail against José Rubén Zamora is scheduled to begin on May 2. He is accused of having demanded $37,500 from businessmen in exchange for not publishing compromising information and of having laundered those bribes.
The president ofThe newspaper He proclaims his innocence and assures that he is the object of “political” processes promoted by Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras to stop his newspaper’s publications on corruption cases involving power.
Serious corruption problems
Washington put Consuelo Porras on a list of corrupt in 2021 and who participated in the dismissal of the former prosecutor of the special anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval.
A large number of former United Nations Anti-Corruption Mission in Guatemala (CICIG) officials and Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutors have been prosecuted and arrested since Alejandro Giammattei took power in 2020.
Last month, the Guatemalan justice system announced the opening of an investigation against Colombian minister Iván Velásquez, motivated by alleged irregularities committed during his tenure as head of the CICIG from 2013 to 2019.
In the process, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, expressed “his concern over the numerous reports that those who have tried to clarify cases of corruption in Guatemala are subject to judicial persecution.”
Source: BFM TV
