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One in every of Guatemala’s most high-profile journalists was convicted on Wednesday of cash laundering and sentenced to as much as six years in jail, in a trial denounced by human rights and free speech advocates as one other signal of the deteriorating rule of legislation.
The journalist, José Rubén Zamora, was tried on expenses of economic wrongdoing that prosecutors say targeted on his enterprise dealing, not his journalism. He was acquitted of blackmail and affect peddling, and fined about $40,000.
Mr. Zamora was the founder and writer of elPeriódico, a number one newspaper in Guatemala that recurrently investigated authorities corruption, together with accusations involving the present president, Alejandro Giammattei, and the legal professional normal, María Consuelo Porras.
For activists defending press freedom and civil rights in Guatemala, Wednesday’s verdict and sentencing, delivered by a panel of judges, was one other blow to the nation’s wobbly democratic well being, as the federal government and its allies have taken repeated purpose at key establishments and unbiased information retailers.
Mr. Zamora, 66, denied any wrongdoing and accused the federal government of attempting to silence its critics.
“Now we have a dictatorship,’’ he informed reporters throughout a short break earlier than the decision was rendered inside a courtroom in Guatemala Metropolis, the capital. “A veiled, multiparty, tyrannical dictatorship.”
Mr. Zamora had confronted many extra years in jail, however the judges discovered there was inadequate proof to help the opposite expenses.
Rafael Curruchiche, who leads the particular prosecutor’s workplace in opposition to impunity that dealt with the case, informed reporters on Wednesday that it might attraction the judges’ resolution and search a 40-year jail sentence.
“If he mentioned he was combating corruption, now he’s a part of that corruption,’’ Mr. Curruchiche mentioned. “He’s corrupt.”
Teams that defend press freedom condemned the trial’s final result.
Mr. Zamora’s conviction serves “as a stark testomony to the erosion of freedom of speech within the nation and the determined makes an attempt of President Alejandro Giammattei’s authorities to criminalize journalism,” mentioned Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Defend Journalists in New York.
The trial occurred because the nation was heading towards a presidential election this month that has already been suffering from irregularities, with 4 opposition candidates disqualified by the courts.
“The rule of legislation is damaged,” mentioned Ana María Méndez, the Central America director at WOLA, a Washington-based analysis institute. Mr. Zamora’s case represents, she added earlier than the decision, yet one more “step towards the consolidation of a dictatorship” in Guatemala.
In contrast to different Central American nations like Nicaragua and El Salvador, nevertheless, the place democracy has additionally eroded, energy isn’t concentrated in a household or a person, Ms. Méndez mentioned. In Guatemala, she added, “authoritarianism is exercised by illicit networks made up of the financial elite, the army elite and arranged crime in collusion with the political class.”
Throughout his tenure working elPeriódico, Mr. Zamora was sued scores of instances by the federal government, principally for slander, because of the newspaper’s protection. However his most severe authorized confrontation with the authorities was set in movement in July, when he was held in pretrial detention and charged with crimes.
As a part of the prosecution’s case, elPeriódico’s financial institution accounts had been frozen, hobbling its funds, earlier than it closed its doorways for good final month.
The primary witness within the case was a former banker, Ronald Giovanni García Navarijo, who informed prosecutors that Mr. Zamora had requested him to launder 300,000 Guatemalan quetzales, or practically $40,000. He additionally claimed that Mr. Zamora had pressured him to position annual paid promoting within the newspaper to keep away from receiving unflattering protection.
However the prosecution didn’t current any proof displaying that Mr. Zamora had obtained the cash illegally. Many of the funds, which Mr. Zamora has mentioned was to pay the salaries of the newspaper’s staff, had come from a businessman who didn’t need his connection to elPeriódico disclosed for concern of reprisals.
His protection was hampered by numerous steps taken by prosecutors and a far-right group, the Basis In opposition to Terrorism, which helps the legal professional normal. Critics say it has tried to intimidate a few of Mr. Zamora’s attorneys.
He cycled by 9 protection attorneys, and not less than 4 have been charged with obstruction of justice for his or her roles within the case.
“Zamora’s protection has been hamstrung from day one by a revolving door of protection attorneys,” mentioned Stephen Townley, authorized director of the TrialWatch initiative on the Clooney Basis for Justice, a rights group. A few of these attorneys, he added, “appeared to not have entry to their predecessors’ supplies.”
A decide who had been presiding over the case earlier within the course of didn’t permit Mr. Zamora to current any witnesses and rejected many of the proof he tried to submit, deeming it irrelevant.
Mr. Zamora’s son, José Carlos Zamora, who can also be a journalist, referred to as the trial a “political persecution.”
For his half, Mr. Giammattei, referring to the case, has mentioned that being a journalist doesn’t give an individual the “proper to commit prison acts.’’
Nonetheless, his administration has been accused by human rights teams of utilizing the justice system to focus on anybody who challenges his authorities. Corruption and human rights instances have stalled and the justice system has been “hijacked” by a community of corrupt actors, in accordance with a report by WOLA.
Since 2021, practically three dozen judges, anti-corruption prosecutors and their attorneys have fled Guatemala, as have 22 journalists who say they’d been threatened due to their work.
When elPeriódico was based in 1996, Guatemala was coming into a extra hopeful interval following a brutal civil warfare that lasted practically 4 a long time and left a whole bunch of 1000’s useless or lacking. For a lot of weary Guatemalans, there was a sense that democracy was taking maintain and the federal government would rule with transparency.
A U.N.-backed worldwide panel of investigators spent 12 years working alongside Guatemala’s judiciary to reveal graft among the many nation’s elite, together with prime authorities officers and businessmen, earlier than being expelled from the nation in 2019 by the earlier president, whom it was investigating.
“What we see right now is a system that desires to proceed to guard” prison conduct, mentioned Daniel Haering, a political analyst in Guatemala Metropolis.
Mr. Zamora’s case and the demise of his newspaper set again efforts to carry the federal government accountable for its actions, Ms. Méndez, of WOLA, mentioned.
“Who’s going to inform the reality in Guatemala now?” she mentioned. “There will probably be an enormous void left.”
The nation is getting ready for nationwide elections on June 25, which civil rights teams say have already been tarnished.
Among the many opposition candidates barred from collaborating was Carlos Pineda, a conservative populist, who had pledged to battle corruption and who a current ballot confirmed had risen to the highest of the sector. Guatemala’s prime courtroom eliminated him from the race on expenses that the strategies his celebration used to decide on him as its candidate had violated electoral legislation.
Mr. Zamora’s case has additionally ensnared journalists merely for overlaying it. Eight reporters, editors and columnists are being investigated on expenses of obstruction of justice after writing concerning the course of for elPeriódico. Most have left Guatemala.
Since Mr. Giammattei took workplace in January 2020, the Journalists Affiliation of Guatemala has documented 472 instances of harassment, bodily assaults, intimidation and censorship in opposition to the press.
On Wednesday, Mr. Zamora made it clear that he would attraction the decision and take his case to the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights, a part of the Group of American States. “All my rights have been violated,” he mentioned throughout a closing assertion in courtroom.
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