16 62. During the public hearing, held on November 20 and 21, 2000, the Court received the statements of the witnesses and the report of the expert offered by the Inter-American Commission. These statements are summarized below. TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE a) Testimony of Luis Carlos Antonio Iberico Núñez, Director of the Channel 2 program, Contrapunto, when Baruch Ivcher Bronstein was Chairman of the Board of the Company Journalist. He has been a member of Congress since July 28, 2000. He began working as a news reporter with Frecuencia Latina on October 1, 1985, then he became a journalist for the Contrapunto (Counterpoint) program and, in July 1996, he became the director of this program. On September 19, 1997, he resigned owing to the judicial and police operation at the Channel that day. The harassment of the press in Peru began on April 5, 1992, when Alberto Fujimori carried out the so-called “autogolpe” (a coup d’etat against himself); subsequently, members of the Army began monitoring all the media, exercising direct censorship so that they would only provide information that accorded with the interests of the National Reconstruction Government. The investigative journalism conducted by the independent media was the principal object of such harassment in Peru. Different methods were used, such as campaigns of intimidation, libel and slander against journalists by the National Intelligence Service (a unit operated directly by Vladimiro Montesinos) through the Army Intelligence Service. In the case of Frecuencia Latina, the businessman, Baruch Ivcher Bronstein, was harassed and he was deprived of his rights, in order to silence the journalists who worked on that Channel. Contrapunto basically dealt with national political topics and had a “rating” of about 20 points in Lima, which amounted to three million homes throughout Peru. The following were some of the most noteworthy investigations shown on Contrapunto and their consequences: In 1996, following the claim that the drug-trafficker, Demetrio Cháves Peña, was in communication with certain senior military officers who were collaborating with him in drug-trafficking operations, Alberto Venero held a meeting with Mr. Ivcher, during which, in the name of Vladimiro Montesinos, he threatened to reveal the existence of a file implicating him in the sale of arms to Ecuador. In 1997, the program showed a report about the Secret Service agent, Leonor La Rosa, who was in the Military Hospital as he had been severely tortured, and also about the assassination and mutilation of the agent, Mariela Barreto; the following day, unidentified military helicopters started to fly low over the roof of the manufacturing plant of Productos Paraíso del Perú S.A. (hereinafter “Productos Paraíso del Perú”), owned by Mr. Ivcher. All these news reports were then dealt with by the Congress of the Republic and had international repercussions.