LatinNews Daily - 11 March 2025

*The Colombia-based journalism foundation, Fundación Gabo, and US-based press freedom lobby group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have condemned the decision by Guatemalan judge Erick García to return prominent journalist José Rubén Zamora to prison on money laundering charges, which are widely considered trumped up. First arrested in 2022, Zamora spent over 800 days in pretrial detention before being placed under house arrest on 18 October 2024. The decision to send him back to prison follows the ruling by an appeals court last week to revoke the measure granting house arrest. The appeal had been filed by the attorney general’s office, whose head, María Consuelo Porras, is aligned with the ‘pacto de corruptos’ network of institutional corruption, of which Zamora had been a vocal critic. A CPJ statement describes the decision to return him to prison yesterday as a “blatant act of judicial persecution”, warning the case represents “a dangerous escalation in the repression of independent journalism”. According to reports by leading national daily Prensa Libre cited by CPJ, García said during the hearing yesterday that “he and his staff had been threatened and intimidated by unknown individuals”.