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| Ecuador President Correa pardons paper in libel case | |
| (40 minutes later) | |
| Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has pardoned the owners and a journalist at El Universo newspaper who faced jail terms and $40m (£25m) in damages for libelling him. | Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has pardoned the owners and a journalist at El Universo newspaper who faced jail terms and $40m (£25m) in damages for libelling him. |
| President Correa, in a statement transmitted live, said he and his government had been portrayed as the persecutors of journalists. | President Correa, in a statement transmitted live, said he and his government had been portrayed as the persecutors of journalists. |
| But his sole aim in bringing the case had been to seek the truth, he said. | |
| The libel case focused attention on the freedom of Ecuador's media. | |
| "I've decided to... pardon the accused and grant them remission of the sentences they rightly received," Mr Correa said in his statement. | |
| The three owners of El Universo - brothers Carlos, Cesar and Nicolas Perez - and columnist Emilio Palacio were found guilty of libelling the president. | |
| They were each given three-year prison terms and had multi-million dollar damages and fines awarded against them. | |
| Mr Correa brought the lawsuit after an article in El Universo questioned an army raid to rescue him from a violent protest by striking police officers in September 2010. | |
| Carlos Perez is currently sheltering in the Panamanian embassy in the capital Quito, while the other three are blieved to be out of the country. | |
| "I never wanted this trial. I never wanted anyone arrested," Mr Correa said. | |
| Editorials | |
| Human rights and press freedom groups condemned the severity of the sentences imposed on El Universo. | |
| But Mr Correa said his battle with Ecuador's private media was a fight for justice. | |
| "They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right," he said. | |
| It was the "dictatorship of the media". | |
| The trial had shown people that they could overcome their fear of a "corrupt" press, Mr Correa said. | |
| In his statement, Mr Correa also said he was dropping a libel case against two other journalists who had written a book detailing the government contracts granted to his brother Fabio. | |
| Fabio Correa has repeatedly said they were the result of public tenders. | |
| President Correa, in office since 2007, has long been at odds with the country's media. He accuses them of spreading lies in an attempt to undermine his government. | |
| The libel case against El Universo sparked a torrent of international criticism, including hard-hitting editorials in several US newspapers. |