PUERTO RICO

The most notable case affecting press freedom concerns attacks on journalists by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The case is continuing in local and federal courts of Puerto Rico. It began on February 10, 2006 when the journalists were attacked while covering an FBI raid on the apartment of an independence leader. On April 16, lawyers of the journalists asked Chief U.S. District Judge José A. Fusté to dismiss the FBI’s motion for summary judgment. On June 13, Judge Fusté dismissed the journalists’ suit against the FBI, and two days later the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld the decision and dismissed the lawsuit of the Puerto Rican Justice Department asking for information from the FBI and the federal Justice Department about the attacks on the journalists. After that decision, the Puerto Rican Justice Department announced on September 13 that it would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to require the FBI to provide information about the attacks on journalists and the death of independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. On March 14, the Appeals Court upheld the decision in the defamation lawsuit against the puppeteer Antulio “Kobbo” Santarrosa who libeled businessman Adolfo Krans, ex-husband of former governor Sila M. Calderón on a popular television program. The appeals judges upheld every part of the decision of Judge Awilda Mejías Ríos on March 7, 2006. The court had ordered Santarrosa to pay $260,000 in damages and $10,000 in lawyers’ fees. The trial against the independent photographer Humberto Trías Casalduc on charges of assault against a police commander was held over on May 30 until the Appeals Court rules on the defense’s motion to dismiss. Trías was accused of attacking the official during a tribute to a Cuban florist at the Capitol. On June 13, the Justice Department announced an administrative order covering journalists’ requests for information. Justice Secretary Roberto Sánchez Ramos said the order will give the press “protection that will keep them safer when they are working.”