The Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora was released from prison this Saturday after more than two years in detention. He will now serve house arrest as part of a legal process that has been rejected by human rights organizations and the international community. Zamora left the Mariscal Zavala military prison, located in northern Guatemala City, where he had been held since July 29, 2022. He was accused by the controversial Guatemalan prosecutor’s office of alleged extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
“I feel very satisfied and happy with the human solidarity,” said Zamora, dressed in a white shirt and blue pants, to reporters waiting outside the prison. Zamora was accused by the prosecutor’s office—whose leaders have been sanctioned by Washington for being considered corrupt and anti-democratic—after his newspaper, El Periódico, published cases of corruption involving the previous right-wing government of Alejandro Giammattei (2020-2024).
“The first thing I will do when I get home is talk to my entire family,” said the 68-year-old journalist, smiling and expressing gratitude that the public “never” abandoned him. “If I had been alone, I would have died,” added Zamora, who also said that now, under house arrest, he will finally be able to “sleep eight hours.”
On Friday, Judge Erick García granted him house arrest, stating that “for human rights reasons, the period of preventive detention has exceeded the limits.” After leaving prison, Zamora was taken in a police-escorted van to his home in the southern part of Guatemala City, where he will defend himself against the charges still open against him.
On June 14, 2023, a court sentenced him to six years in prison for money laundering, but the sentence was annulled, and the trial must be repeated. Dozens of citizens waited for him outside the military base on Saturday. Berta Méndez, a 61-year-old auditor, said the journalist’s imprisonment “has affected everyone.”
In Guatemala, “there is no freedom of expression, our actions are being restricted, and I believe that the country truly deserves and needs a change,” Méndez told reporters. Zamora’s detention has been criticized by the United States and other countries, international press and human rights organizations, and by the president of Guatemala himself, Bernardo Arévalo.
Zamora is considered a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, and in July, Colombia’s Gabo Foundation awarded him the Gabo 2024 Prize for Excellence. After nearly 10 months of Zamora’s imprisonment, El Periódico, the newspaper he founded in 1996, ceased publication on May 15, 2023. It had received several awards, including the Outstanding Media award at the 2021 King of Spain International Journalism Awards.
