Guatemala’s Supreme Court rejected on Thursday an appeal by journalist José Rubén Zamora to reverse the order that sent him back to jail two weeks ago, revoking the house arrest he had maintained since October. The 68-year-old journalist has been imprisoned for more than 800 days. He faces two parallel cases initiated in 2022 by the Prosecutor’s Office, which international organizations consider an attack against press freedom.
Guatemala’s President Bernardo Arévalo has criticized these proceedings but cannot intervene in the Prosecutor’s Office that accuses Zamora of alleged money laundering, blackmail, and obstruction of justice. The Court’s Appeals Chamber “unanimously resolved to definitively suspend” Zamora’s defense appeals, after an appeals court annulled his house arrest, the Judiciary indicated in a statement.
The magistrates argued that the journalist’s lawyers should have asked the same court to review its order, as a preliminary step before going to the Supreme Court, the text adds. On March 10, a judge ordered Zamora to return to prison after complying with the court’s ruling following actions by the Prosecutor’s Office and the plaintiff in the case, the far-right Foundation against Terrorism.
The journalist spent more than 800 days in the Mariscal Zavala prison barracks in the capital, from July 2022 until last October. His son, José Zamora, described the Appeals Chamber’s decision as “terrible.” “What it definitely seeks is to illegally extend the arbitrary detention,” he said from exile in the United States.
Authorities arrested Zamora after he published cases of corruption in his newspaper El Periódico that implicated then-president, right-wing Alejandro Giammattei (2020-2024). The newspaper closed in 2023, while he was in prison. A court sentenced him on June 14, 2023, to six years in prison for money laundering, but the sentence was annulled, and the trial must be repeated.
