2 In cases of extreme gravity and urgency, and when necessary to avoid irreparable damage to persons, the Court shall adopt such provisional measures as it deems pertinent in matters it has under consideration. With respect to a case not yet submitted to the Court, it may act at the request of the Commission. 3. Regarding this matter, Article 25(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court provides that: At any stage of the proceedings involving cases of extreme gravity and urgency, and when necessary to avoid irreparable damage to persons, the Court may, at the request of a party or on its own motion, order such provisional measures as it deems pertinent, pursuant to Article 63(2) of the Convention. 4. In International Human Rights Law, provisional measures are not only preventive, insofar as they maintain a juridical situation, but fundamentally protective because they protect human rights. Provided that the basic requirements of extreme gravity and urgency are met, together with that of avoiding irreparable damage to persons, provisional measures become a true preventive jurisdictional guarantee. 5. Due to the existing doubts and circumstances, the Court deems it necessary to specify the provisional measures ordered by the Court. 6. In its brief requesting provisional measures, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter “the Commission” or “the Inter-American Commission”) requested that the Court order the State to stay execution of the November 12, 1999 conviction decided by the Criminal Trial Court of the First Circuit in San José, Costa Rica, until the Commission has reached a final decision on the merits of this matter or until the Inter-American Court has rendered judgment. 7. The November 12, 1999 judgment of the Criminal Trial Court of the First Circuit in San José decided: 1) to convict the accused on four counts of libel; 2) to order a forty-day fine on each of the four counts, to be paid by Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, at a rate of ¢2,500.00 (two thousand five hundred colones) per day, for a total fine of 160 days which, when the rule for appearance in court was applied, was “reduced to three times the greatest fine,” in other words, a fine of 120 days for a total of ¢300,000.00 (three hundred thousand colones); 3) to find for the plaintiff in the civil damages suit, ordering Mauricio Herrera Ulloa and the newspaper La Nación, as jointly and severally liable, to pay moral damages of ¢60,000,000.00 (sixty million colones) as compensatory damages for the stories reported in La Nación on March 19, 20 and 21 and December 13, 1995; 4) to order Mauricio Herrera to publish the “Therefore” section of the court’s ruling in the newspaper La Nación, in the section titled “El País”, using the same size and typeface used in the articles against which the suit was brought; 5) to order La Nación to break the existing online link at La Nación Digital between the surname Przedborski and the articles that prompted the complaint; 6) to order La Nación to establish a link in La Nación Digital between the articles that prompted the complaint and the operative part of the judgment; and 7) to order Mauricio Herrera and the daily La Nación to pay court costs of ¢1,000.00 (one thousand colones) and ¢3,810,000.00 (three million eight hundred ten thousand colones) in personal expenses; 8. In its September 7, 2001 Order, the Court ordered only the following three provisional measures: