a violation of the Convention. The Commission requested the State of Costa Rica to send in writing its response to certain questions raised in the course of the hearing, since a representative of the Attorney General of the Republic had failed to appear at the hearing. 17. On November 30, 2001, the State sent the Commission a document presenting its latest comments on the admissibility of the complaint, including the replies to the questions the Commissioners had raised during the November 16, 2001 hearing. III. POSITION OF THE PARTIES ON ADMISSIBILITY a. Position of the petitioners 18. The petitioners allege that the petition meets all the requirements for admission by the Commission. 19. The journalist, Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, wrote two articles published in “La Nación” newspaper pertaining to the diplomat, Féliz Przedborski, an ad honorem representative of Costa Rica to the International Atomic Energy Commission headquartered in Austria. In those articles, reference was made to various reports in the Belgian press which linked the diplomat to serious illegal acts, such as drug trafficking, tax fraud, and fraudulent bankruptcy, among others. The articles also linked him with Costa Rican politicians and questioned his suitability to serve as a public official. 20. The diplomat in question brought a criminal and civil suit for damages before the Costa Rican courts. This suit was resolved in a decision handed down on November 12, 1999. The operative part of that decision found that Mauricio Herrera Ulloa was liable for four offenses of publication of insults constituting defamation, and punished him with 120 days in fines, or 300,000 colones, while “La Nación,” legally represented by Fernán Vargas Rohrmoser, was fined 60 million colones for moral damages or injury to reputation caused by the publications on May 19, 20, and 21 and December 13, 1995, plus one thousand colones for court costs and three million eight hundred ten thousand colones for personal costs. At the same time, the judgment ordered that the links on the case be withdrawn from the Internet edition of “La Nación” and that a connection be established between them and the operative portion of the judgment. It further ordered publication of the judgment, to be done specifically by the journalist, Mauricio Herrera Ulloa. On February 27, 2001, the Criminal Trial Court of the First Judicial Circuit of San José ordered execution of the judgment, at which time the petitioners requested the precautionary measures of the Commission. 21. The petitioners maintain that the Costa Rican courts have violated the rights enshrined in Articles 1, 2, 8,13, 24, 25, and 29 of the Convention, restricting the freedom of expression of the presumed victims, and that this entails international responsibility on the part of the Costa Rican State. The petitioners further allege that Costa Rican criminal legislation limits individual freedoms because it contains desacato laws or “offenses against one’s honor,” which any person may commit by threatening or offending anyone performing public functions. They argue that the institution of exceptio veritatis is also a restriction of individual freedoms, to the extent that it exonerates from culpability the person charged with defamation or injury, once the truth of the allegations is proven. 22. Moreover, the petitioners allege that due process and judicial guarantees were violated as well, because, in the second appeal proceeding, the court failed to review the substance of the conviction, the judges were not impartial, and the principle of non reformatio in peius was violated. They argue that the legal prohibition of maintaining Internet links, and the order to establish others constitute a case of judicial censure, in violation of the American Convention. 23. On the issue of admissibility, the petitioners indicated that the Commission has jurisdiction to hear the petition on the basis of ratione loci, ratione materiae, ratione tempori and ratione personae. As regards its jurisdiction based on ratione personae, they maintain that there is active and passive justification or proof in the present petition. The active proof is reflected in the fact that the petition identifies as victims two human beings. The victims were identified as Mauricio Herrera Ulloa and Fernán Vargas Rohrmoser, and not the newspaper, “La Nación.” They alleged that Mr. Rohrmoser is qualified as a victim because he was the subject of the 3