Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora obtains the benefit of house arrest

The renowned Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, former director of the newspaper elPeriódicoleft jail this Thursday afternoon after a judge granted him the benefit of house arrest. “It is a very important afternoon for me, although I think it is very possible that I will return,” Zamora said at the prison door.

Zamora has reasons to doubt. Detained since July 2022, he had already been sent home in custody in 2024, but five months later a court ordered his return to prison. “For me it was a surprise, I went (to the court hearing) with few expectations. However, the man (judge) said that it is the Public Ministry that has to prove that he committed a crime, it is not the accused who has to prove that he is innocent (…) It means, I create a small window of hope,” he added.

Zamora was imprisoned without conviction accused in two cases: one, for alleged money laundering; the other, for conspiracy to obstruct justice.

In October of last year, the journalist was awarded the Albies award for his fight against corruption awarded by the Clooney Foundation for Justice. “Country after country, you can see how journalists are persecuted just for doing their job,” said actress Meryl Streep, who was in charge of presenting the statuette to José Carlos Zamora.

During the hearing in which he was granted house arrest, the prosecution objected, arguing that procedural “dangers” that could affect the case still persist.

The Attorney General’s Office (PGN), on the contrary, maintained that there were insufficient reasons to keep Zamora in preventive detention, so granting measures to respect Zamora’s human rights was viable. As part of the alternative measures, it was agreed that the arrest will be without police surveillance and that Zamora must go to the Public Ministry twice a month to sign the attendance book.

“We feel very happy, after four years that my father has been basically kidnapped,” says José Carlos Zamora, the journalist’s son, by phone from the United States, where he lives in exile with his mother. “It is good to see that there is a small advance in justice. We hope that it is really the beginning of the Judicial Branch correcting the course of all those violations of due process in my father’s case,” he adds. Mother and son followed the judicial resolution on video through social networks.

Zamora was imprisoned for 1,295 days. At the beginning of his imprisonment, both he and various national and international organizations reported that he suffered torture during what they considered a “political prison.” Zamora considers himself a political prisoner and has accused former President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras of prosecuting him for his publications about corruption.

After the change of Government and the coming to power of Bernardo Arévalo, the president met in August 2024 with representatives of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and with the journalist’s son, to whom he “reaffirmed his commitment to do everything possible to achieve the release” of Zamora, according to an RFS statement. Two months later, Arévalo visited Zamora at his residence after he was released from prison. “He regains freedom who was perhaps the most significant example of the punishment to which the press was subjected during the regime of darkness and corruption that is beginning to lose space,” Arévalo then commented on his social networks. Five months later, he was sent back to prison.

Although the president has publicly condemned Zamora’s imprisonment and promised that his government would take “all measures that defend freedom of expression,” the journalist was not released from prison again. His re-entry to prison in March 2025 responded to a request from the Public Ministry of Porras, the attorney general who tried to dethrone Arévalo since he was elected in 2023 and whom the president sought to remove without success.

The founding journalist and president of the defunct newspaper elPeriódicoa media critical of the power in power, must appear before the judge again in March to continue with its judicial processes. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) is pending issuing a resolution on the first process in which it is accused of money laundering.