Álvaro Montenegro wrote in El Faro English about the situation of Virginia Laparra, a former anti-corruption prosecutor, imprisoned for highlighting corruption in the judicial system.
On February 23, prosecutor Virginia Laparra completed one year in prison, held alongside military officers, politicians, and businessmen who she helped to prosecute. The Public Prosecutor’s Office and courts have allied to deny her the possibility of house arrest and even medical treatment for a severe uterine disease. Laparra, like journalist José Rubén Zamora, has become a scapegoat of a judicial system that has exiled more than thirty judges and prosecutors, as well as journalists and activists. Hardline groups have propelled this hunt with spurious lawsuits in court, where they have an increased foothold, and brazen intimidation on social media of those who have sought to clean up the justice system.
This former prosecutor faces very powerful actors who have managed to manipulate the laws to keep her in prison. Their virulence draws applause from those who, from 2015 to 2018, with the anti-corruption fight in full swing, faced jail time. They now seek to distort the facts to cast the defunct International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and its allies as “also” corrupt. It’s unclear what will happen to Laparra, especially with a second known case against her advancing at a snail’s pace. But most worrying is the state of her health, to which the state appears to give no mind.
[…]
In the last year, the criminalization against justice operators has worsened. People who have been prosecuted for major corruption or human rights violations want to force people into exile, even if it does not end in their capture, because political prisoners are a strain on the Government. The truth is that they have sowed unease, since all of these groups’ denunciations are admitted in the courts, given priority, and sealed. Alternatives to detention are denied, even though the cases have neither rhyme nor reason.
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Virginia Laparra, a Scapegoat in Guatemalan Prison.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Gender, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Legal, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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