GUATEMALA CITY — José Rubén Zamora has spent almost two years locked in a dark 16-by-13-foot cell in a Guatemalan prison and is allowed only one hour of sunlight a day.
The journalist’s money laundering conviction was thrown out and last week a judge finally ordered him released on probation pending a new trial. But the 67-year-old founder of the newspaper El Periódico never managed to leave. Two more cases against him include arrest warrants.
In a jailhouse interview Tuesday, Zamora told The Associated Press that he had heard he would be arrested in July 2022, a week before agents came looking for him. But, he said, “it never crossed my mind to run away. “I have to face justice because I can defend myself, because I am innocent.”
International press freedom organizations have characterized Zamora’s arrest and detention as a political process. Zamora agrees. He maintains that his legal problems were masterminded by former president Alejandro Giammattei, who appeared many times in the pages of El Periódico accused of corruption.
Zamora said his treatment has improved somewhat since President Bernardo Arévalo took office in January, but the bar was low.
On his first day in prison, in July 2022, he only had a towel that his wife had given him, with which he covered the bare mattress where he slept. He went two weeks without speaking to another prisoner. His only outside contact was with his attorneys, a changing cast of more than 10, two of whom were also eventually charged with obstruction of justice.
Things always got worse for him before a hearing.
“There was one day when the prison chief came to take me out of the cell every time I bathed or went to the bathroom, he wanted to search me,” Zamora said.
One night before a hearing, workers began installing bars near his cell from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m., he said.
The long hours without sunlight, isolation and being woken up several times a night by guards amount to psychological torture, Zamora said.
“Listen to how it sounds when it closes,” Zamora said of the steel door to his cell. “Imagine that six times a night.”
Zamora constantly brings up details of his cases. The only one that earned him a conviction (later dismissed) was for money laundering. Zamora explained that a well-known painter friend of his had donated a painting to him, which he then sold to pay the newspaper’s debts.
He believes his newspaper’s critical reporting on Giammattei’s administration led to prosecutions by Attorney General Consuelo Porras, whom Giammattei appointed to a second term before leaving office.
The other cases revolve around alleged obstruction of justice and falsification of documents.
There are no trial dates for either case.
“That case like this is a setup,” said Zamora. “There is nothing to back it up. For them it will collapse in the same way.
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