GUATEMALA CITY – When Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora returned to his home after more than two years in prison without a conviction, he found it empty. He said it smelled of abandonment after his family fled the country, fearing they would face his same fate.
On Monday, one week after his release, Zamora discussed his own uncertain future in an interview with The Associated Press under the shadow of efforts to keep him behind bars and his concern for other journalists that do the kind of investigative work he did.
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Not only have Guatemalan journalists — including eight from the outlet El Periódico that he founded — been forced into exile under threat of prosecution, but those who remain wrestle with the fear that if they investigate “they can end up in jail,” Zamora said.
Thrust into the spotlight, the 68-year-old journalist is shy, not keen to be the target of news.
He said he can still feel the aftermath of imprisonment in his bones, and also in his day-to-day life after funding his legal defense forced him to sell his belongings, only skating by through support from his children.
“Frankly, the feeling of not having any money, that is mine, is complicated and I don’t have the means to get around,” he said.
The interview comes after a long journey for Zamora, who has spent the past three decades working as a journalist. Twenty-four of those years were as president of El Periódico, the news organization he founded to investigate corruption in Guatemala.
It’s a dangerous topic to investigate in a country like Guatemala, where the Attorney General's Office raided electoral facilities, seized and opened ballot boxes and targeted the Seed Movement party of now-President Bernardo Arévalo in an effort to keep him from taking office.
To this day, Zamora believes it was his paper's investigative work that led him to be targeted by prosecutors. In particular, it was his pointed criticism of former President Alejandro Giammattei and his ally, current Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who was sanctioned by the United States for allegedly obstructing corruption investigations.
Porras' agents raided Zamora's house in July 2022 and arrested him, accusing him of money laundering after he asked a friend to deposit $38,000 that Zamora said was a donation to his news organization.
Zamora said he did not put the money in the bank himself because the person who made the donation feared being retaliated against for supporting the media outlet. He was initially convicted and sentenced to six years, a ruling that was annulled due to procedural failures.
He was later accused of falsifying documents and faced a second trial for allegedly lying in the first case against him.
In late October, he was finally set free, after a judge cited that two years of pre-trial detention violated national and international human rights law.
Upon his release, one of his first visitors was President Arévalo.
“I explained to him that in Guatemala, there have never been institutions dedicated to control or rigorous oversight," Zamora said. “That is why the press is so important: There is no prosecution or punishment for the corrupt, rather there are walls of impunity.”
Zamora said he was happy to finally speak to his family, but it was clear he still lives with the fallout of his two years in jail and a deep sense of uncertainty over what comes next.
Upon his arrest, his newspaper El Periódico disappeared. Eight of its journalists and columnists live in exile like his family for publishing articles on the abuse of power of judges and prosecutors — including about his case.
Since Porras remains attorney general, Zamora worries that he could once again be thrown in jail.
He said he’s been left without a job, and worries about friends, family and even people who he speaks to at the prosecutor's office when he goes for his required regular check-ins.
“I worry about people greeting me, because they may face some consequences,” he said.
The only thing that remains of his old life are piles of old copies of his newspaper in his home's garage.
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