The Public Ministry (MP) reported this Monday, June 8, that it withdrew the complaint against journalists and columnists of elPeriódicoa case that had been presented by the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (Feci).
“That’s right, the corresponding process to desist was carried out,” stated the investigating entity when consulted.
Just last June 2, a group of journalists asked the Constitutional Court (CC) to respect free expression, during a hearing convened by that judicial body to analyze a request from the MP that sought to reactivate a criminal process against them, which the communicators described as persecution.
La Feci intended that a group of journalists and columnists from the defunct newspaper elPeriódico was investigated for the crime of obstruction of justice after having given his opinion on judicial anomalies in the case of its founder, journalist Jose Rubén Zamora Marroquín.
The Prosecutor’s Office argued that the publications damaged the “honor” of former Attorney General Consuelo Porras (2018-2026), but neither the prosecutors nor the former official appeared at the hearing on June 2, despite having promoted the appeal.
In this matter, the Fifth Criminal Court, the Third Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Justice had already ratified that the case could not be settled through criminal means, but exclusively through a Printing Court, protected by the Thought Emission Law.
Since March 2023, the MP sought to prosecute half a dozen communicators for the notes published about the trial against journalist Jose Rubén Zamora Marroquín.
Between 2019 and 2023, at least 50 people, including journalists, judges, prosecutors and activists, left Guatemala after denouncing political persecution against them.
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