Policemen who aided murders
get 72 years each in prison


A court in Limón gave two Fuerza Pública officers a symbolic 72 years each for delivering two young men to their executioners.

The police officers are Walter Angulo Durán and Jorge Jiménez Saldaña. Two other men were convicted and sentenced to 70 years each for the actual murders. They are Mauricio Ocampo Cordero and Johansy Mora Rojas.

Under Costa Rican law prisoners can only serve 50 years, but judges frequently impose much longer sentences to stress the magnitude of the crime.

Angulo and Jiménez, the policemen, used their authority to round up four young men in Cahuita. With drawn guns they confronted the four in the local park, tied them up and eventually delivered them to members of a rival drug gang in Valle de las Estrellas, also on the Caribbean coast, according to testimony. Ocampo and Mora took a knife to their hostages. Two, Roy Sotela Prendergast, 23, and Natanael Rodríguez Obregón, 17, died. Another man suffered serious injuries. A fourth man fled and survived. That happened June 14, 2008.

Flu is making a comeback
with two deaths reported


Health officials are concerned by the resurgence of swine flu in Costa Rica. At least two persons have died.

Cases have been confirmed in Pavas, Oremuno de Cartago, Los Chiles and in the Talamanca mountains. A case in Los Chiles involved a Nicaraguan man who came across the border seeking medical help and then died. The second victim there was a Costa Rican man who also lived near the border.

Health officials also are trying to get more information on the death of three children in the Talamancas due to respiratory problems.

Many Costa Ricans already have been vaccinated against swine flu. The Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social conducted a campaign a year ago.

Amnesty International sees
bright spot in Latin America


There is still no scarcity of poverty and human degradation around the world. But Amnesty International says in its latest annual human rights report that people are being held accountable for some of the worst violations.

"We're very encouraged by the trend for example in Latin America where we had three former heads of states brought to justice from Peru, Uruguay and Argentina," said Claudio Cordone, interim secretary general.

But Cordone says many countries are limiting progress in international justice by acting only when it is politically advantageous.

"We still see governments who hold themselves above the law, for example by not accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court," he said.  "Among those are seven of the G20 countries.  And also, we see governments shielding their political allies from international scrutiny."

The countries that have not signed up for the ICC include China, Russia and the United States.  Cordone says the criminal court is an essential tool to fight human rights abuses.

"The court is there to act when governments are unable or unwilling to bring people to justice," he said.

Amnesty International criticized the United States for continuing to detain terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention center despite President Barack Obama's commitment to close the facility by the beginning of 2010.

Cordone also says repression remains a major problem around the world.  He cites Iran's actions following its disputed presidential election last June. "People have been arbitrarily arrested, have been tortured," he noted. "Even the government had to acknowledge that actually women were raped in custody." 

Dead man was fireman


A U.S. citizen who died in La Fortuna de San Carlos earlier this week has been identified as 54-year-old Thomas Ruben Baylon, a retired San Francisco, California, fireman.

A friend said that the man lived alone for several years and that he used a false name because of some unspecified legal problems in the United States.  Investigators still do not know if the case is a suicide or a murder. The man died from a stab wound in the neck.