For more than 30 years, journalist José Rubén Zamora has been a bastion of corruption investigations in Guatemala, but almost a year ago he became a world symbol of press freedom: on July 29 of last year he was arrested by the Presidential Guard of his country, accused of money laundering, in a fact that the international media have seen as a reprisal for his denunciations against the government of President Alejandro Giammattei.
The son of the famous reporter, José Carlos Zamora, has just passed through Bogotá, invited to the Gabo Journalism Festival, to denounce the arrest of his father and seek the solidarity of the union. In dialogue with EL TIEMPO, he recounted the innumerable persecutions that his family has suffered, which reach unsuspected extremes:
“There were times when they spent machine-gunning the newsroom,” says Zamora. They were going to throw grenades at the house. On one occasion, they blew up a car in front of a restaurant. In 2003, after an investigation carried out during the administration of President Alfonso Portillo, the State sent an elite team to our house that entered and held us hostage for around three hours. In the first hour, we thought they were going to kill us all. Then, that they were going to kill my dad. And then they left, but what they wanted was to scare us and leave us a message: to stop posting. We managed to identify the people who entered the house and it was an elite body of the State, made up of very special people from different government departments, including the Presidential Guard. There was a trial and they were in prison for 20 years.”
He called the fire brigade and they were preparing him to perform the necropsy when they saw that he had minimal vital signs. It was truly a miracle that he survived.
It’s almost a miracle that his father is alive…
In 2008, my dad was kidnapped and more than a kidnapping it was an assassination attempt. They dumped him 40 minutes from the city in a rural area and that place was very cold, it seems he got hypothermia and that saved him. The next day, a woman was walking and saw her foot come out of the grass, from the side of the road. She called the fire department and they were preparing him to do the necropsy when they saw that she had minimal vital signs. It was truly a miracle that he survived.
Why was he arrested last year?
During the first 144 weeks of the administration of the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, The newspaper (medium founded by Zamora in 1996) published 144 investigations of corruption within his administration. And the last two were the breaking point: one, on the abnormal purchase of vaccines during the pandemic. And then there was another about how the President gave the concession of a mine to a Russian company, through a contract that was extremely onerous for the country. It was possible to document that bribes had been delivered to the State of Guatemala. The administration denied this, but then, in November of last year, the US Treasury Department endorsed the investigation and sanctioned the Russian company. He said that members of the Guatemalan State were bribed at the highest level. That led to the persecution: they fabricated this case for my father, they took him to prison and he is about to serve a year in prison. Aside from the fact that the case was fabricated and spurious, it had a process that lasted 11 months and was an absolute violation of due process. They persecuted his lawyers, four of them ended up in prison, they did not accept the evidence or the defense witnesses and then the Prosecutor’s Office requested 40 years in prison, one of the most excessive requests in history.
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They charged him with the crimes of money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling. Did they find him guilty of all of them?
He was sentenced to six years in prison for laundering, but the sentence is not yet final, it is in the appeal process. And they dropped two of the charges, which were blackmail and influence peddling. To fabricate the case, they looked for someone within the Public Ministry and chose a former prosecutor. The entire case is based on the fact that they said that she gave my dad privileged information about important cases and he blackmailed those involved by publishing her cases. Based on this, they say that he laundered money. What is interesting is that the former prosecutor was acquitted. And automatically the charges against my dad should have been dropped. But they managed to change the essence of the case. The only reason why my dad has not been able to prove where his funds come from is because in the first phase of the process the judge did not accept the evidence or the key witness, who is the one who manages to prove that the funds are legal. He has the checks, the dates, everything is traceable and documented. But they did not let him introduce his evidence, it is one of the violations of due process.
Was anyone else in the family charged?
The Giammattei administration is on its way out, they tried to speed up this whole process and within that, they began to persecute my younger brother. He is 34 years old and lived in Guatemala. They made up that he fabricated a document that he gave to my dad’s lawyers. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and its support groups are dedicated to persecuting and harassing anyone who is a critical voice. And they threatened to go for my brother. In the end, it seems they took the order away and my brother had a trip. He is an academic, a professor at a university, he had an invitation to give a class, he left and that was when all this happened, so he decided not to return and is in the United States.
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My father’s case is not isolated, it is a pattern: the Giammattei administration has systematically dedicated itself to attacking all democratic institutions
Is it a persecution against his father?
My father’s case is not isolated, it is a pattern: the Giammattei administration has systematically attacked all democratic institutions, persecuting anyone they consider to be opposition, and what they all have in common is that they have been part of of the fight against corruption. They have gone after the highest profile judges, prosecutors and journalists. There are around 40 justice operators in exile. Another 30 journalists in exile. And all those who have not made it out face prosecution or are in prison. They continue to create additional cases for those who are in prison, in case the first one falls, they have another to keep them in pretrial detention. My dad now has three additional cases, all absurd. For example, one of obstruction of justice and they say that my father, from prison (and although The newspaper ceased to exist on May 15), is the head of a criminal structure that used reporters to attack judges and prosecutors. Now they’re going after those other nine people in a case that’s under wraps, and they’re not letting them know why they’re going after them.
Through it all, your father never lost his sense of irony: what was his response to another incident with his first newspaper?
In 1993, there was a president named Jorge Serrano Elías who decided that he was going to become a dictator. He abolished the Constitution and Congress, sent censors to all the media and they were accepted by all except my father’s newspaper, which was called Twenty first century. He didn’t let the censors in and the next day he published the paper, but he changed its name and called it fourteenth century, as if it were the Middle Ages: on the entire first page, the printing was in black, obscuring the news, and he faxed the entire edition around the world. It was a very tense moment, there was persecution, we all had to go to different houses, hide… but then that president fled to Panama.
Have you ever thought that it would be easier to stop stepping on such powerful enemies?
It is very difficult, I don’t know if it is something that only journalists can understand, but this is a work of conviction, of very strong principles. My dad says it’s like a priesthood, it’s a dedication of his life to these principles, in which he deeply believes. They are freedom of the press and using journalism as a public service, to inform society. To denounce and expose abuses of power.
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What was your participation in the Gabo Festival?
I have always admired the Foundation and the festival, throughout its history. I am very honored by the invitation to participate in a panel entitled ‘Freedom of expression, at risk’, together with great journalists that I have admired all my life, such as Mónica González, Carmen Aristegui and Carlos Fernando Chamorro. And the moderation of Pedro Vaca, special rapporteur for freedom of expression of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Now we are in an electoral process, at the end of August we have the second round and there will be a new president. That change may help my dad get his freedom.
What can come in the future for your father?
It has been seen how the government that is going out has been losing power, I think they have many problems because they have big cases of corruption, at some point they are going to have to render accounts. Now we are in an electoral process, at the end of August we have the second round and there will be a new president. That change may help my dad get his freedom. I don’t think any candidate wants to start his administration with so much international pressure for this political persecution, which would be inherited from the outgoing government. We are appealing the sentence against him and we have the documents and the witness to prove the origin of the funds. As soon as we’re allowed to present that evidence, the case they have against my dad is going to fall apart and hopefully soon. And if it is not resolved in Guatemala, the case will reach the Inter-American Court and it will be there that they will realize that it is a spurious case, a political persecution and that the State has kidnapped my father for more than a year. anus.
In the name of the Father
José Carlos Zamora has had to defend his father’s honor from outside Guatemala. He currently resides in Miami and is the director of impact communications for Exile Content Studio, a company founded by Colombian journalist Isaac Lee, which generates content aimed at Latinos in the United States and in the world. The name of that company (Exilio, in Spanish) seems like a declaration of principles of its target group: “The focus is to make content for the big streaming platforms, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO Max: movies, documentaries, series; we do podcasts, we have a music division and a digital one,” says Zamora.
JULIO CESAR GUZMAN
editor of EL TIEMPO
On Twitter: @julguz
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