© Reuters. Guatemala’s President-elect Bernardo Arevalo stands on the Sq. of Human Rights outdoors the Supreme Courtroom, in Guatemala Metropolis, Guatemala November 16, 2023. REUTERS/Cristina Chiquin/file picture
By Brendan O’Boyle
(Reuters) – Worldwide rebuke swelled on Saturday over what observers say are efforts to make use of a politicized justice system to maintain Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arevalo out of workplace.
A prosecutor at Guatemala’s legal professional basic’s workplace on Thursday moved to strip Arevalo of his immunity from prosecution, accusing him and his working mate of complicity within the takeover of a college within the capital final yr.
Arevalo, an anti-graft candidate elected in a landslide in August, known as the prosecutor’s transfer “absolutely illegal.”
In a press release on Saturday, the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights and its Workplace of the Particular Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, condemned the legal professional basic’s workplace’s “incessant improper actions and interference.”
“These threaten the democratic order, the ongoing presidential transition process and the individual and collective exercise of civil and political liberties in the country,” the assertion stated.
Earlier Saturday, senior U.S. Division of State official Brian Nichols condemned the legal professional basic’s workplace’s “malign request” to strip Arevalo and his Vice President-elect Karin Herrera of immunity in a submit on social media.
Additionally on Saturday, the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (Grupo IDEA) printed a letter signed by 29 former heads of state from Latin America and Spain denouncing the “persecution” of Arevalo and Herrera, which has the “repeated and clear purpose of obstructing the sovereign will of Guatemalans, already expressed through free elections.”
Guatemalan Legal professional Normal Consuela Porras, accused by the U.S. authorities of corruption, has pursued a felony investigation in opposition to Arevalo in addition to his center-left Seed Motion occasion since earlier than his election.
