85
g(3)
issue a public apology for the human rights violations it has
committed;
g(4)
publish the judgment delivered by the Inter-American Court in
the instant case; and
h)
once the position of the alleged victims’ representatives was heard,
the Court was asked to order the Costa Rican State to pay the costs incurred
by the victims and their representatives in processing the legal cases in the
domestic courts and those incurred when the case was brought to the
Commission and then to the Court.
Pleadings of the alleged victims’ representatives
189. The alleged victims’ representatives argued the following with regard to
reparations, costs and expenses:
a)
as one measure of restitution, the November 12, 1999 conviction and
all the judgments that upheld it and the court orders to enforce them should
be declared void and of no legal effect;
b)
the foregoing implies that the following shall be rendered without
effect: 1) the criminal conviction of Mauricio Herrera Ulloa; 2) the order to
publish the “Now, Therefore” portion of the November 12, 1999 verdict in the
newspaper “La Nación” in the same print face in which the articles about
which the criminal complaint was filed appeared; 3) the order to take down
the link at the “La Nación Digital” website on the Internet between the
surname Przedborski and the articles about which the criminal complaint was
brought, and to create a link between those articles and the operative part of
the November 12, 1999 judgment of conviction; 4) the accessory penalty
ordered against the property of the defendant for civil liability; and 5) the
order to pay costs;
c)
both the civil liability resulting from the crime and the order to pay
costs are penalties associated with the criminal conviction and accessorial to
it; therefore, if the attribution of the crime of which Mr. Mauricio Herrera Ulloa
was convicted is a violation of his human rights and therefore illegitimate, so,
too, are the direct consequences of the criminal conviction;
d)
the effects of the civil damages ordered should disappear erga omnes,
i.e., with respect to those convicted and with respect to any persons who, as
alleged creditors, might make a direct or indirect claim on the civil award;
e)
the listing for Mr. Mauricio Herrera Ulloa’s name in the Judiciary’s
Record of Convicted Felons should be definitively removed;
f)
with regard to Costa Rican domestic law, the representatives asked
the Court to order the State to adopt the reforms needed to ensure that the
provisions of the Penal Code that concern crimes against honor are
compatible with the Convention, taking care to guarantee that: i) the Costa
Rican legal system does not unduly restrict the right to freedom of expression
through laws criminalizing defamation, calumny and insult in cases involving
articles about public officials or on issues of public interest; ii) penalties for
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