Judge Jimi Bremer rescheduled this Thursday, May 9, the hearing to offer evidence in the case of Claudia González, former president of CICIG. The new date for the hearing will be next June 5.
After being notified, Blanca Stalling and Claudia González exchanged a few words outside the courthouse, as documented on video.
Lawyer González was arrested on August 28, 2023 because Blanca Stalling, who at that time was a judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, accused her of having ordered supposedly anomalous procedures once morest her in 2017 for a corruption case.
González is waiting to be tried for a case of alleged abuse of authority in an open investigation into the actions of then-judge Stalling.
On May 8, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “very concerned” regarding the situation of the lawyer and human rights defender Claudia González, for whom he asked for “a fair trial.”
word crossing
This Thursday following the hearing, González and Stalling had an exchange of words in one of the hallways outside the courthouse.
González was talking with international observers in the hallway regarding the rescheduling of the hearing in her case and seconds later Stalling appeared in the video, who approached the former CICIG president to listen to what she was talking regarding.
He then interrupted González and questioned: “What violations of human rights?” She later recalled that she was imprisoned for a year and a half and that González was opposed to being given a substitute measure.
“But in your case you have committed a crime, I have not committed a crime,” González told the former magistrate, who responded: “we are not going to discuss this.”
“See you, with permission,” González added.
Defense presented memorial
González in statements indicated that her defense attorney presented a memorial on Monday, May 7 so that the hearing was not suspended and recalled that there are two months of delay since the intermediate phase, which according to her violates due process.
He said that judges should be aware that if they have an agenda they should “respect.”
“This sets me back considerably and the judge always makes the excuse that his agenda is very full, so there is no efficiency in the justice system, there should be a performance evaluation to know how this and the other courts are functioning,” he said.
He said that the “judge neither substantiates nor resolves and we do not have rooms that can access requests due to the delay in due process.”
While Blanca Stalling was asked what she thought regarding lawyers from other countries arriving to accompany the hearing and she stated that Guatemala is an independent country and “we are a state of law, no one has to come to interfere in the judges’ decisions. ”.
“I believe that if any Guatemalan abroad appears in court and wants to prove what the judges do or what the justice system does in other countries, that is called judicial interference, obstruction of justice, coercion, threats and that is definitely It is going to lead us to chaos,” he said.
He added that “if foreign countries want Guatemala to do what they want, then they should take us as a colony and we will definitely be able to have greater access to justice better than theirs.”
“Our emigrants will no longer have to migrate to the United States, we are going to be another state, so it would be worth it if they want us as a state, but only to interfere, so that we do what they want, it is not fair, It is not fair that they are treating Guatemala as if it were a colony, we are an independent country, we are a country that has democracy, we are a State, and as a State we have to solve our problems,” he stated.
According to Stalling, lawyers from other countries do not know the cases and “they come to interfere in what they really do not know, what the interests are, that is what I would like to know.”
Regarding the rescheduling of the hearing, Stalling said that the justice system in Guatemala needs a budget to have more courts and judges, justifying that “it is not easy for judges to carry that workload” due to the number of cases.
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They also asked him if he is going to run for any position in the court election process and he responded that he will not run “because I know that the pressures in our country do not allow officials to make free decisions.”
They also asked her if she has been pressured at any time, which is why she indicated: “I have always been pressured and that is why I went to jail.”
She added that a group of officials asked her to work with them when she was president of the Criminal Chamber to resolve cases “that interested them, putting pressure on judges to resolve according to what they wanted.”
She recalled that she was imprisoned through a “staged trial” and that González says that she committed a crime, which she described as “false.”
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