There have been no serious attacks on press freedom.

The media have reported that the jury trial against the former chairman and three other leaders of the New Progressive Party (PNP) accused of rioting for invading the Office of the Women’s Prosecutor’s Office (OPM) on June 20, 2002 to protest the display of the U.S. flag in that agency is in its final stage. The court required that television chains Telemundo (Channel 2), Univisión Puerto Rico (Channel 11) and Televicentro
(Channel 4) hand over raw footage of the incident.

The newspaper El Vocero and its associate editor, Edith M. Seda, filed a lawsuit in the federal District Court, alleging that the Treasury Department has used threats of seizure to restrict the newspaper’s freedom, which constitutes selective persecution. The case involves a claim for payment of a tax debt by Seda and her husband, Héctor Llenza. The government agency has denied the allegations saying that the debt is Llenza’s and the couple is seeking protection of press freedom to avoid paying it.

Panelists of the news analysis program “Fuego Cruzado” and Radio Isla station lost their court case demanding the right to continue using the name of the program when they left WKAQ-Radio. Press reports said the station had registered the name with the government on August 31, 2001. The plaintiffs alleged that they had named the popular program before going to WKAQ-Radio and therefore the name belonged to them. They said the name was registered without their knowledge. The judge ruled that they should stop using the name, based on Article 26 of the Trademark Law, according to press accounts.

One of the people charged with destroying federal property on Vieques Island during a riot about the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy and the handover of the land it had used to a federal agency was sentenced to 60 months in prison. During the trial, the federal judge ordered local television stations to give the 12 defendants copies of footage taken during the riot, which occurred early in the morning on May 1, 2003. The judge called journalists Miguel Pomales and Denise Rivera Bello of Univisión Puerto Rico to authenticate the footage. Other journalists from the Telemundo chain and one from Univisión who work in New York were called but did not appear.

On March 5, it was learned that the newspaper El Vocero will have to pay $1.8 million in damages for libel in a suit brought against it in 1992 by prosecutor Iris Meléndez. It concerned 43 articles that accused her of sexually harassing a secretary in a city prosecutor’s office (Cemid). The judge, Luis E. Roque Colón of the Puerto Rican Superior Court also ordered the newspaper to pay $100,000 in lawyers’ fees with 5% statutory interest rate. The decision also ordered the newspaper to publish a retraction and an excerpt from the decision concerning the inaccuracy of the articles with the same display as the original articles, some of which were on the front page. The case began in June 1991 and ended on December 2, 2003. The defendants are El Vocero; its publisher Gaspar Rocca; the reporter, José Purcell; the former Cemid secretary, Marta Marrero; and her lawyer, Héctor Santiago.