Miami (January 21, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern at wiretapping of journalists and staff of the Costa Rican newspaper Diario Extra by judicial officials of the Central American country, which it called “an attempt to intimidate news sources.”
Executives of the newspaper in a press conference yesterday denounced the wiretapping done by the Judicial Police and Public Prosecutor’s Anti-Organized Crime Office. The complaint was based on an internal judicial order that was sent anonymously to the newspaper’s newsroom. The more than 200-page document contained the order to tap the telephone calls of the newspaper’s staff and judicial officials and police officers, with the objective of detecting people that might have served as news sources from within the official bodies.
The wiretapping was understood to have begun after a journalistic investigation into several kidnappings in which police officers were believed to have taken part, something that was reported to a journalist by sources within the Judicial Police.
Diario Extra said that for 10 months it had been the object of wiretapping by the Judicial Investigation Unit (OIJ) “to determine who had been our news sources” for reports that it had been publishing on “matters of public interest, serious actions or wrongdoing by officials of the judicial branch of government.”
Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, condemned “this act of telephone spying” which puts into question respect for press freedom in the country, in contravention of professional confidentiality of news sources as established in international treaties and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Declaration of Chapultepec.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared that “this is a flagrant violation of freedom of information” which “has as its main objective intimidating news sources.” He saw it as an attack on the right to seek and investigate information by a media outlet and the right of the public to receive information.
The Costa Rican judicial branch of government rejected the accusation in a press release and said that it has asked for a report by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Social Investigation Unit.
In response to a question by the IAPA the newspaper’s legal counsel, Carlos Serrano, said that he did not know if the wiretapping had ceased or was continuing.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
