13 B) TESTIMONIAL AND EXPERT EVIDENCE 66. At the public hearing held on April 30 and May 1, 2004, the Court heard the testimony of the witnesses and the opinions of the expert witnesses offered by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the alleged victims’ representatives and the State, respectively. The Court will now summarize the relevant parts of their testimony. a. Testimony of Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, alleged victim in the case Mauricio Herrera Ulloa has worked as a journalist at the newspaper “La Nación” for twelve years. There he has been an editor of supplements, a journalist in the political affairs department, and currently works in the Research Unit. On May 19, 20 and 21 and December 13, 14, 15 and 16, 1995, he published seven articles in “La Nación, which made reference to reports published in four first-rate, prestigious newspapers in Belgium. The reports in concerned Mr. Félix Przedborski, who at the time was Costa Rica’s Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mr. Herrera Ulloa was at the time working in the political section of the “La Nación” newspaper and was assigned to cover the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the presidential residence. The news reported in the Belgian press implicated Mr. Przedborski in the “biggest financial, political and military scandal in the history” of that country. The Belgian newspapers linked Mr. Przedborski with “shady, underthe-table deals” in which he allegedly received commissions from the sale of combat helicopters, a sale that set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the assassination of Belgium’s Vice Prime Minister, André Cools. Mr. Przedborski’s name came up in the midst of the investigation into the matter in Belgium which allegedly implicated him in a “multi-million dollar fiscal mess in Germany and Belgium” and various kinds of “illegal trafficking.” The newspaper “La Nación” and Mr. Herrera Ulloa thought it was entirely legitimate to inform the Costa Rican public of the reports about Mr. Przedborski in the European press, since “freedom of information is a twoway street”: on the one hand, every citizen has the right to seek, investigate and impart information on matters of public interest; on the other hand, every citizen also has a right to receive that information. Mr. Herrera Ulloa exercised that two-way right in the articles he published in “La Nación.” Mr. Mauricio Herrera Ulloa and the newspaper “La Nación” regarded the contents of the articles published in a number of foreign newspapers as meeting a public interest; before publishing the articles, they checked the reliability of the sources and reviewed their facts. This process, which is routine for any case being reported by “La Nación”, initially consisted of “the most thorough verification possible” of the sources available to them. They checked documents and, to confirm the facts and turn up new information, consulted a number of people who may have had some contact with the 18 Cf. annexes 1 to 6 of the brief of final written pleadings presented by the alleged victims’ representatives and dated May 31, 2004 (file on preliminary objections and possible merits, reparations and costs, volume V, folios 1614 to 1645).