In a decision published on Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights agreed with the former editor of Público newspaper Tavares de Almeida Fernandes, who had been condemned by the Portuguese courts for the article.
Tavares de Almeida Fernandes appealed to the ECHR against having to pay €60,000 to a judge after publishing the article in September 2006 with the headline “The strategy of the spider” about the election of the president of the Supreme Court.
After having lost in various Portuguese courts, Tavares de Almeida Fernandes said that under the terms of article 10 of the Human Rights’ Convention, that the decisions breached his right to free speech and that the €60,000 compensation was “disproportionate and had a negative effect on exercising the freedom of opinion”. TPN/Lusa