A Guatemalan judge sent former anti-mafia prosecutor Virginia Laparra to trial for allegedly revealing confidential information, already sentenced in December for abuse of authority, in a case that has generated criticism from the international community.
“It is ordered to open an oral and public debate,” Judge Carmen Acú said at the end of a hearing in the city of Quetzaltenango, 200 kilometers west of Guatemala City.
Laparra, who was head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity in Quetzaltenango when she was arrested in February of last year, is accused by the Public Ministry of having leaked confidential information to the press about a corruption case.
The process is the second that the former prosecutor will face, who on December 16 was sentenced by a capital court to four commutable years in prison after finding her guilty of abuse of authority, in a controversial and accelerated trial that lasted 18 days.
According to that sentence, the prosecutor did not have the powers to denounce a judge who was investigated by the defendant, the AFP news agency reported.
“The selective prosecution of justice and media actors undermines the rule of law, democracy and prosperity in Guatemala,” US diplomacy spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter after the verdict.
The open case for disclosure of information has prevented Laparra from leaving prison, since the four-year sentence imposed in December is commutable and allows him to obtain his freedom with the payment of bail.
Amnesty International said in a statement this Friday that “the arbitrariness and human rights violations that continue to occur in the two processes that (the former prosecutor) faces continue to confirm the intention to punish her for her work as an anti-corruption prosecutor.”
Laparra’s arrest is added to criminal proceedings opened against several former prosecutors and judges who investigated corruption cases, most of which were uncovered in the last four years of the mission of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIG), an entity attached to the UN. which worked between 2007 and 2019.
The processes, the majority for alleged abuse of authority, are promoted by the Public Ministry in charge of Consuelo Porras, included by Washington in 2021 and 2022 in a list of people involved in acts of corruption or that undermine democracy in Central America.
Source: Ambito
