Guatemala newspaper founder sentenced to six years in jail

A Guatemalan court on Wednesday sentenced the founder of a newspaper critical of the government to six years in prison on money-laundering charges, in a trial denounced by press freedom groups.

Jose Ruben Zamora Marroquin, founder of El Periodico which was shut down last month after nearly three decades in operation, was sentenced to six years in prison, said Judge Otto Valvert. The sentence cannot be commuted.

Prosecutors had sought a jail term of 40 years.

Zamora, 66, has already been behind bars for 10 months awaiting trial in a case media organizations say amounts to an attack on freedom of expression amid a broader clampdown on government detractors in several spheres.

He was arrested last July and charged with money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling.

Zamora denies the charges. Arriving at court Wednesday for sentencing, he denounced the government of President Alejandro Giammattei as “a dictatorship.”

The prosecution claims Zamora extorted money from business leaders in exchange for not publishing damaging information about them.

He says the money on the charge sheet came from the sale of a work of art to finance his El Periodico newspaper, dragged into financial straits by his arrest.

Zamora, who has won international awards for his paper’s investigative journalism, accuses Giammattei and Attorney General Consuelo Porras of trying to silence him for bringing government corruption to light.