From combined dispatches
RIO DE JANEIRO — A federal judge ordered a halt to fingerprinting all U.S. visitors to Rio de Janeiro, a requirement that was imposed in response to antiterror steps in the United States, a court official said yesterday.
Later yesterday, the government issued an executive order, saying the requirement would remain in place for 30 days while an interministerial group studied the issue.
It was not immediately clear which measure took precedence. Even government lawyers had differing opinions over whether the judge’s order or the government decree took precedence.
The measures initially delayed U.S. travelers in airports for up to nine hours since Jan. 1.
A federal judge ordered the measures after the United States this month began fingerprinting travelers arriving from a number of countries, including Brazil.
Judge Catao Alves of the First Regional Federal Court issued an injunction Friday night after the city of Rio de Janeiro appealed the initial ruling, Alcino Coelho, an aide, said by telephone from the capital, Brasilia.
The injunction only applies to Rio de Janeiro — Brazil’s No. 1 tourist destination — because it was the city that filed the appeal.
U.S. tourists arriving in the city continued to be fingerprinted and photographed yesterday morning.
In the northeastern city of Recife, federal police began using digital equipment yesterday rather than ink pads to process Americans. There are no direct flights from the United States to Recife, which receives mainly European tourists at its international airport.
U.S. officials have called the Brazilian response discriminatory because it singles out Americans. Brazilian officials have cited the diplomatic principal of reciprocity in justifying the action.
In the order last month, Judge Julier da Silva compared the U.S. measures to the “worst horrors perpetrated by the Nazis” and ordered police to start taking American visitors’ fingerprints and photographs.
Judge Alves, siding with Rio de Janeiro in a lawsuit, said the practice might hurt Brazil’s economy by cutting into tourism. “The courts cannot endorse political retaliation,” Judge Alves wrote in his decision, “because it could hurt our country’s foreign relations.”
At Rio’s international airport and at the seaport, U.S. tourists again were waiting yesterday in the long lines that have become common since the system went into effect on Jan. 1 in response to a similar U.S. system.
The Rio mayor’s office said the measure had led to cancellations of group tours and damaged the city’s economy.
Carnival, a major tourist draw in Rio, will be held Feb. 21-24.
The practice led U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to complain last week about delays as long as nine hours for arriving tourists. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim responded by asking the United States to exempt Brazilians from being fingerprinted and photographed, as it does for visitors from 27 countries.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva planned to discuss the issue with President Bush in a meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, last night.
The new ruling was a partial victory for Rio de Janeiro Mayor Cesar Maia, who went to court against the practice and said long delays at airports will spook U.S. tourists who spend $340 million a year in the city. The city attracted 38 percent of the 3.7 million foreign tourists that visited Brazil in 2002.
“The decision should convince the Brazilian government not to do anything else retaliatory that makes our country look bad,” Mr. Maia replied by e-mail to questions from Bloomberg News.
The ruling only applies to Rio de Janeiro, and the judge left it to the central government to decide whether to scrap the practice elsewhere in Brazil, Mr. Coelho, the court spokesman, said.
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