REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES DECLASSRED Authority Stateletter Inh12 8: ML, R30:ta 24 981 Desp. No. 356 Anerican Embassy, San José, July 19, 1948.
UNCLASSIFIED lation of which is enclosed specifies imprisonment or banishment of from one to ten years for those engaging in armed rebellion or uprisings or certain other offenses in connection therewith, such as recruitment of troops for this purpose, usurpation of command, attempting to prevent the authorities from performing their duties through coercion or by other means or engendering hatred or wreaking vengenance upon the person or proporty of any authority, their agents or against public property.
Paragraph specifies that dissolution of parties or organizations covered by the decree law and individual or collective disassociation of their members does not relieve them from (legal) responsibility until such time as the good faith of the accused in doing so shall have been proved in court, Paragraph specifies that those charged as specified if in Par. may not be released from arrest as long as they are under trial.
818, 0075 ARA och DIE Paragraph specifies that the Court of Immediato Sanctions (Please refer to the Embassy des patoh 256 of May 21, 1948) will assume jurisdiction for the trial of casos contemplated by this law as long as the new Constitution is not in force. In order to shorten the provisional detention of those charged under this law, the Court is to give preference in trying their cases.
The final paragraph specifically inoludes VANGUARDIA POPULAR in the prohlbition of artiole It will be remembered that most of the former Vanguardia 10 aders who still remain in the country have been under intermittent arrest practically from the time the Junta took charge. During the period that individual constitutional guarantees were not suspended, the new Supreme Court, in a laudable spirit of independenoe, repeatedly granted writs of habeas corpus ordering the release of these leaders, most of whom were held without the preferment of charges. Nearly all were re arrested within a few blooks of the penitentiary immediately after their release.
Efforts by the Junta to have these former Vanguardia leaders leave the country voluntarily have been successful in only a few isolated cases. The present decree law will empower the Junta, through the special instrunent of its own creation. the Court of Immediate Sanctions. to banish these leaders from the country for periods up to ten years.
As previously UNCLASSIHTID