<p>GUATEMALA CITY &mdash; Guatemalan prosecutors on Wednesday requested that former President Jimmy Morales be stripped of his immunity so he can be prosecuted for violating the mandate of the United Nations-backed anti-corruption mission then working in the country.</p>
<p>Morales, who led Guatemala from 2016 to 2020, has immunity because after his term he immediately became a representative to the Central American Parliament. Morales assumed the presidency pledging to battle corruption but once he and family members became targets of the anti-corruption mission, he moved to push it out of Guatemala.</p>
<p>In 2017, Morales declared the head of that mission, Colombian Iván Velásquez, persona non grate and did not allow him to re-enter the country.</p>
<p>Morales was twice investigated during his presidency for alleged electoral crimes.</p>
<p>But it was his decision to force Velásquez out, despite a ruling from Guatemala’s highest court that he couldn’t, that was cause for Wednesday’s move by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s office to try to strip his immunity.</p>
<p>The U.N. mission, known as the CICIG, worked in Guatemala for 12 years, taking down criminal networks and even former President Otto Pérez Molina and his Vice President Roxana Baldetti.</p>
<p>To lift Morales’ immunity the Supreme Court will assign the case to a judge who will decide whether the evidence presented by prosecutors is valid. That judge will then make a recommendation and the Supreme Court will take the final decision.</p>
<p>Neither Morales nor his lawyers immediately commented.</p>