Costa Rica

COSTA RICA On January 24 freedom of the press in Costa Rica was dealt its most serious blow, when Division III of the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of the November 12, 1999, judgment sentencing journalist Mauricio Herrera Ulloa to pay a fine of 120 times the daily minimum wage on four counts of defamatory publication. The Supreme Court thus upheld the judgment, which also required the newspaper La Nación to pay 60 million colónes (about $200,000 U.S.) in damages and the plaintiff's attorneys' fees. The journalist's name was also ordered added to the Judicial Registry of Criminal Offenders. The lawsuit related to reporting on questions posed by reputable European publications (Le Soir Illustré, La Libre Belgique and Der Spiegel) to Costa Rica's former honorary ambassador to the Atomic Energy Commission, Félix Przedborski. The justices held that the foreign publications introduced as evidence offered insufficient substantive proof of truth in reporting, ruling that La Nación should not have published that the European press was asking Przedborski about his involvement in scandals in countries where he represented Costa Rica. Other documents introduced by La Nación, supported by testimony from a former Costa Rican ambassador in Europe, were also rejected as evidence of truth. Moreover, little weight was given to the fact that the journalist had made every effort to tell Przedborski's side of the story. Since Przedborski had declined to comment, the journalist had cited lawyers and friends of the former ambassador to give a properly balanced news account. On May 29, 1998 the San José trial court had unanimously dismissed the complaint against the journalist, finding that the evidence justified publication, but the Supreme Court set aside that decision on May 7, 1999, giving rise to the new trial. The legal precedent created by this ruling is cause for alarm, since now Costa Rican newsrooms cannot even cite wire stories filed by international news agencies. The judgment's reach also extended to the Internet. La Nación was ordered to remove from its online edition links between Przedborski's name and the stories cited in the complaint, and add a link in its online edition between Przedborski's name and the holding of the judgment, which the same court order required it to publish. On March 1, however, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights petitioned the government of Costa Rica for interim relief to safeguard the rights of Mauricio Herrera Ulloa and La Nación representative Fernán Vargas Rohrmoser. The specific interim relief included a request to stay enforcement of the judgment in the case involving former ambassador Félix Przedborski, since it would cause "irreparable harm" to the exercise of freedom of expression. The stay of enforcement is for six months, unless lifted if the circumstances that formed the basis for the interim relief are found to no longer exist. During that period of time the commission will rule on the merits of the case. Judicial harassment of the press continues. Adoption of interim relief measures requested by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the support of the IAPA are very important.