A Guatemalan journalist released from prison fears for his future and will become a target for his work

GUATEMALA CITY — When Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora returned to his home after more than two years in prison without conviction, he found it empty. He said it reeks of abandonment after his family fled the country fearing they would suffer the same fate.

Today, a week after his release, in a Monday interview with the Associated Press, he discussed his uncertain future in the shadow of efforts to keep him behind bars and his concerns for other journalists who do the same investigative work as he does.

Not only have Guatemalan journalists, including eight from the newspaper he founded, El Periódico, been forced into exile under threat of prosecution, but those who remain struggle with the fear that if they are investigated “they could end up in jail,” Zamora said .

Thrust into the spotlight, the 68-year-old journalist is shy and doesn’t want to be the target of news.

He said he still feels the effects of his imprisonment in his bones, as well as in his daily life, after funding for his legal defense forced him to sell his belongings, surviving only on the support of his children.

“Honestly, the feeling of not having money that is mine is complicated and I don’t have the resources to move around,” he said.

The interview follows a long journey for Zamora, who has worked as a journalist for the past thirty years. Twenty-four of those years he was president of El Periódico, the news organization he founded to investigate corruption in Guatemala.

An investigation into this matter is dangerous in a country like Guatemala, where the Attorney General’s Office raided polling facilities, seized and opened ballot boxes, and targeted current President Bernardo Arévalo’s Seed Movement party in an attempt to prevent him from taking office.

To this day, Zamora believes it was his newspaper’s investigative work that made him a target of prosecutors. In particular, this was his sharp 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 home in July 2022 and arrested him, charging him with money laundering after he asked a friend to deposit $38,000, which Zamora claimed was a donation to his news organization.

Zamora said he didn’t put the money in the bank himself because the person who made the donation feared retaliation for supporting the media. He was initially found guilty and sentenced to six years, but this sentence was overturned due to procedural errors.

He was later charged with forging documents and faced a second trial for allegedly lying in the first case against him.

He was finally freed in late October after a judge found that two years of pre-trial detention violated domestic and international human rights law.

After his release, one of the first guests was President Arévalo.

“I explained to him that in Guatemala there has never been an institution for control or rigorous supervision,” Zamora said. “That’s why the press is so important: there are no prosecutions or punishments for the corrupt, rather there are walls of impunity.”

Zamora said he was happy to finally talk to his family, but it was clear he was still living with the effects of two years in prison and a deep sense of uncertainty about what would come next.

After his arrest, his newspaper El Periódico disappeared. Eight of his journalists and columnists live in exile, as does his family, for publishing articles about the abuse of power by judges and prosecutors – including his case.

As Porras remains in office, he fears he may be thrown back into prison.

He said he has been left without a job and is worried about friends, family and even people he talks to at the prosecutor’s office while going for required regular checkups.

“I’m worried about people greeting me because there might be some consequences,” he said.

The only thing left from his former life are stacks of old copies of the newspaper in his home garage.

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