ORDER OF THE
INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
OF MAY 23, 2001
REQUEST FOR PROVISIONAL MEASURES OF THE
INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
IN THE MATTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF COSTA RICA
THE LA NACIÓN NEWSPAPER CASE
HAVING SEEN:
1.
The communication of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(hereinafter “the Commission” or “the Inter-American Commission”) of March 28,
2001, in which it submitted a request for provisional measures in favor of Mauricio
Herrera Ulloa and Fernán Vargas Rohrmoser, respectively journalist and legal
representative of the Costa Rican newspaper, La Nación, “for [the Court to request] the
Republic of Costa Rica to protect the freedom of expression” of the said persons. The
grounds for the Commission’s request were that:
a)
the journalist, Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, had been criminally convicted of
four offenses in the sphere of libel, owing to articles published in the
newspaper, La Nación, which reproduced what had been published in the
European press concerning a “controversial” Costa Rican public official
accredited by the Costa Rican foreign service to the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in Vienna;
b)
the judgment of the Criminal Trial Court of the First Judicial Circuit of
San José ordered: 40 days of fines at two thousand five hundred colones a day
for each of the four offenses, for a total of one hundred and sixty days of fines
and, in application of the rules for this type of proceeding, the penalty was
reduced to three times the highest fine imposed, that is to one hundred and
twenty days of fines, which would amount to three hundred thousand colones;
the civil action for compensatory damages was declared admissible and
Mauricio Herrera Ulloa and Periódico La Nación, S.A., represented by Fernán
Vargas Rohrmoser, as the persons jointly liable, were condemned to pay sixty
million colones for the non-pecuniary damage caused by the publications in the
newspaper, La Nación, on May 19, 20 and 21 and December 13, 1995;
publication of the operative paragraphs of the judgment in the same section of
the newspaper, La Nación, that is, “El País”, and with the same typeface as the
articles that were the subject of the dispute, under the responsibility of Mauricio
Herrera Ulloa, as the person responsible for the unlawful acts that were
committed; that La Nación S.A. withdraw the link that existed between the last
name Przedborski and the disputed articles in La Nación Digital on Internet, and
that it establish a link between those articles and the operative paragraphs of
the judgment. Furthermore, the judgment condemned the defendants to pay
one thousand colones towards the procedural costs and the sum of three million
eight hundred and ten thousand colones for personal costs;
c)
the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice admitted the appeal
for annulment filed against the judgment of the Criminal Trial Court of the First
Judicial Circuit of San José, but rejected this appeal and, in a judgment of
January 24, 2001, confirmed the decision that had been appealed;