"In the ruling, notified today [Dec.21, 2021], relapsed in the Case of Palacio Urrutia et al. v. Ecuador, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared the international responsibility of the State of Ecuador for the violation of the rights to freedom of expression, the principle of legality, movement and residence, job stability, judicial guarantees and judicial protection, and the duty to adopt provisions of domestic law, to the detriment of Emilio Palacio Urrutia, Nicolás Pérez Lapentti, César Enrique Pérez Barriga and Carlos Eduardo Pérez Barriga. The State made a partial acknowledgment of international responsibility in this case.
On Feb. 6, 2011, Mr. Emilio Palacio Urrutia, who worked as a journalist for the newspaper El Universo, published an article entitled 'NO to lies,' in which he took a stance on events that occurred in Ecuador on Sept. 30, 2010, and criticized some actions by then President Rafael Correa Delgado. As a result of the publication of this article, Mr. Palacio Urrutia, and the directors of the newspaper El Universo, Messrs. Nicolás Pérez Lapentti, César Enrique Pérez Barriga and Carlos Eduardo Pérez Barriga, were sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of 'serious libelous insults against authority' and the payment of a joint sum of thirty million U.S. dollars."
