Guatemalan gets 30 years in killing of two journalists

The covered body of journalist Federico Benjamin Salazar Geronimo lies on the ground in the central park of Mazatenango, Guatemala. (AP Photo/File)

A Guatemalan court has sentenced a man to 30 years in prison in the killings of two journalists. Sergio Valdemar Cardona was driving the motorcycle from which another man shot journalists Danilo Efrain Zapon Lopez and Federico Benjamin Salazar Geronimo, while they were walking in a park in March 2015 in the municipality of Mazatenango.

The alleged shooter, Eduardo Ariel Mazariegos Ramirez, remains a fugitive. Zapon Lopez was a reporter with the newspaper Prensa Libre and Salazar Geronimo worked with Radio Nuevo Mundo.

In January, Guatemalan prosecutors and the United Nations anti-corruption commission petitioned to have lawmaker Julio Antonio Juarez Ramirez stripped of his immunity, accusing him of being the crime’s intellectual author. The Supreme Court has not ruled on that request.