GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Five members of Guatemala’s anti-corruption prosecutor’s office have resigned from their posts this month, the Public Ministry mentioned on Monday, after two of them publicly denounced what they referred to as unjust prosecution.
Another 4 anti-corruption officers have been arrested in current weeks amid a brewing political disaster.
Juan Luis Pantaleon, a spokesman for the Public Ministry, confirmed the resignations of three public prosecutors and two assistants from the Special Prosecutor’s Office towards Impunity (FECI), with out elaborating on the explanations they gave for leaving their posts.
Rudy Herrera, one of the FECI prosecutors who resigned, had a warrant issued for his arrest however left the nation final week.
Now in Washington D.C., Herrera mentioned in an announcement there was a marketing campaign of persecution towards impartial justice operators with the goal of “guaranteeing impunity to felony networks.”
Former prosecutor Carlos Videz, who additionally resigned, made related allegations.
“To forestall an try on my life, I made the troublesome determination to resign and depart the nation to keep away from being another sufferer of unjust persecution,” Videz mentioned in an announcement.
Videz had accused Attorney General Maria Porras of permitting felony networks to go unpunished and to expedite circumstances towards human rights defenders and impartial justice operators.
Pantaleón rejected the accusations of persecution towards impartial judicial officers in addition to Videz’s accusations towards Porras.
In addition to the resignations, Guatemala’s legal professional basic’s office has already arrested three FECI members, together with a prosecutor, on expenses of abuse of authority and witness coercion, in addition to a lawyer for the now-defunct International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG), for obstruction of justice
FECI collaborated with the CICIG, a U.N. physique that was expelled from Guatemala in 2018, after efficiently imprisoning former presidents, officers and businessmen concerned in corruption circumstances.
The political disaster began in July final yr when the FECI started investigating Porras’ dismissal of former head of the entity Juan Francisco Sandoval. Sandoval had accused the legal professional basic of obstructing investigations associated to President Alejandro Giammattei.
(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Adriana Barrera, Robert Birsel)
