(Credit: El Universo, screenshot)

Emilio Palacio, a reporter for Ecuador’s El Universo newspaper, has obtained asylum from the United States, the Guardian reported.

As we have written, Palicio and three others from the newspaper were sentenced to jail and hefty fines last year after the country’s president Rafael Correa won a libel suit against them for Palicio’s February 2011 column calling Correa a dictator.   The journalists appealed the ruling, but Ecuador’s National Court of Justice upheld it in February of this year.  Correa later pardoned the journalists, but the court rejected the pardon.  (For more background on the original libel case check out our February report.)

Check out all our stories on media ethics and Ecuador.