SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A U.S. District Court judge ruled Wednesday that FBI agents did not use excessive force on Puerto Rican journalists who covered a raid last year on properties owned by an independence activist.
U.S. District Court Judge Jose Fuste said in his ruling that courts have previously found that law enforcement officers ''may reasonably use force against members of a crowd when they ignore instructions to disperse and create a potential safety threat.''
Mark J. Lopez, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented journalists in the case, said his clients will appeal the decision. ''We are very disappointed with the decision of the court,'' Lopez said in a statement.
The journalists say the agents violated their rights by kicking them and using pepper spray as they gathered to watch a raid on a San Juan building in February 2006. The FBI said the raid was intended to thwart a ''domestic terrorist attack'' by pro-independence militants.
Fuste said that FBI agents ''did not act unreasonably in using pepper spray'' or in ''kicking, punching, or hitting them (the crowd) with batons.''
Luis Fraticelli, special agent in charge of the FBI in Puerto Rico, had said agents used ''non-lethal force'' when protesters and the media tried to cross a law-enforcement perimeter during the raid. An internal FBI probe had determined that excessive force was not used against the media and no civil rights were violated.
The 2006 incident sparked anti-FBI protests several months after fugitive militant leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios died in a September 2005 gunfight with FBI agents that rallied pro-independence demonstrators in the U.S. Caribbean territory.
