Former president Rafael Correa initiated a legal process that ended with the conviction for libelous insults against Emilio Palacio and the Pérez brothers, shareholders of the newspaper.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court) declared the “international responsibility” of the Ecuadorian State for the violations of various rights the columnist Emilio Palacio and the directors of the newspaper El Universo, Nicolás Pérez, César Pérez and Carlos Pérez. And he ordered a series of comprehensive reparation measures in his favor.
#Judgment of the @CourtIDH in the Case of Palacio Urrutia et al. v. Ecuador ????????: The State is responsible for the violation of the rights to freedom of expression, movement and residence, and to the job security of a journalist and the directors of a diary. pic.twitter.com/hsx74TLCHZ
– Inter-American Court of Human Rights (@CorteIDH) December 21, 2021
The decision of the Inter-American Court was reported on Tuesday, December 21, by the newspaper itself. According to that publication, the agency had taken the resolution on November 24 last. You can see the summary of the resolution here:
On February 6, 2011, Emilio Palacio, who worked as a journalist at El Universo, plocated the article titled “NO to lies”, in which he pronounced on events that occurred in Ecuador on September 30, 2010, and criticized some of the actions of then-President Rafael Correa.
On the occasion of the publication of this article, Palacio and directors of the newspaper El Universo were sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of “Serious slanderous insults against the authority” and the payment of a joint sum of $ 30 million. The Universe, in turn, had to pay the sum of $ 10 million.
In the executive summary of the case, the Inter-American Court indicates that this “Opinion article that referred to a matter of public interest, for which it enjoyed special protection in view of its importance in the democratic debate ”.
