© Luis Echeverria / Archyde.com
Judge Érika Aifán was handling the file of an ongoing investigation involving Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
Érika Aifán, one of the main judges in Guatemala, awarded last year in the United States for her fight once morest corruption and impunity, said that she made the decision to resign from her position due to “lack of sufficient guarantees of protection” for her ” life and integrity. The jurist is facing attempts to revoke her immunity, which might lead to her being prosecuted and even imprisoned. This is the story.
He is a key figure in the fight once morest corruption in Guatemala. In a new setback for the international image of the country, Erika Aifán Dávila presented last Monday, March 21, her resignation as the main judge of the High Risk Court D.
“I faced complaints, threats and pressure. Today I have decided to present my resignation because I do not have sufficient guarantees to protect my life and integrity, nor the possibility of defending myself with due process,” Aifán declared in a video broadcast on Twitter.
The Guatemalan judge, who dealt with high-impact corruption cases, made the announcement from the United States, where, according to the local press, she has been for a week. “There was information that if I tried to leave the country for any reason, they were going to try to kill me,” she assured in an interview with the radio station ‘Emisoras Unidas’.
High-profile cases under the scrutiny of Judge Aifán
Aifán has been in the eye of the storm for spending 19 years in the Judicial Branch, -the institution that exercises judicial power in Guatemala-, including six in charge of the High Risk Court.
The discomfort caused by her work materialized in 2019, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ordered precautionary measures for the judge for being the object of threats and harassment in the framework of her investigations. Aifán then mentioned intense social media campaigns once morest her, but also state surveillance, espionage in her own office, and theft of her documents.
At the center of his complaints is the Public Ministry, which he accuses of persecuting him. Since March, she has been under a legal process endorsed by the Supreme Court of Justice to be investigated by a judicial decision, which puts her immunity at stake.
The judge also mentioned that the same Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, requested information in a case that allegedly involves him.
Recently, Aifán revealed that he was in charge of the testimony of a witness who alleges that Giammattei would have received illicit money for his electoral campaign in the amount of 2.6 million dollars that allowed him to win the Presidency in 2019. The president denied the accusations.
“I have known large cases of organized crime and corruption structures at all levels of the State from which the greatest number of pressures and threats once morest my independence and integrity arise,” Aifán reiterated in his video.
“A campaign of harassment” that hinders the fight once morest corruption
Judge Erika Aifán also played a crucial role in the anti-corruption drive led by the UN anti-corruption body known as CICIG, which remained in the Central American nation between 2006 and 2019.
Alejandro Giammattei himself – then future president – was imprisoned for 10 months as a result of an investigation by that anti-corruption entity.
However, the CICIG was expelled from the country shortly before Giammattei came to power in 2019.
Judge Aifán’s resignation is the latest result of what the opposition calls “a campaign of harassment” by the State once morest officials committed to fighting impunity.
Opposition deputy Bernardo Arévalo told France 24 that it is “a very serious event. It is an indicator of the progress of the campaign of harassment to which the actors who defend an independent Justice in Guatemala are submerged.”
The deputy of the opposition political group Semilla is concerned regarding what he calls “a setback for democracy and the reconfiguration of an authoritarian state that relies on corrupt judges, lawyers and magistrates.”
Guatemala, “a country of exiles”
Agreeing with these complaints, several former members of the Guatemalan judicial apparatus have accused the current Attorney General Consuelo Porras of obstructing key investigations once morest corruption in the country.
Porras was in fact sanctioned in September by the United States following accusing her of “obstructing” Justice in high-impact cases in Guatemala.
With Aifán Dávila, there are already 15 Guatemalan judicial officials who have had to leave their country in recent months due to what they denounce as state intimidation.
“We are once once more a country of exiles” deplores Bernardo Arévalo, “an exile made up of judges, magistrates and people who cannot live in their own country because the institutions themselves harass them, just for doing their job.”
