Ecuador’s highest court on Thursday upheld a criminal libel verdict favoring President Rafael Correa, sentencing three newspaper executives and a columnist to three years in prison each and ordering them to pay a total of $42 million in damages.
The defendants, joined by international press freedom and human rights groups, had called the case an attempt by Correa to bankrupt the country’s leading opposition newspaper, El Universo, and part of a concerted campaign to stifle free speech and silence critics.
