A judge ordered Thursday that Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora be returned to house arrest again while awaiting trial after spending nearly a year in jail in his latest stint of incarceration.
Zamora, the 69-year-old founder of El Periodico newspaper, had spent more than two years behind bars awaiting trial before a judge granted him house arrest in October 2024. Prosecutors immediately appealed and won rulings that sent him back to jail in March 2025.
Zamora had been imprisoned since July 2022, when he was charged with money laundering, amounting to around $38,000, and in June 2023 he was sentenced to six years in prison. The sentence was overturned by an appeals court because of errors in the process.
