Brazil judge reverses order censoring news sites

RIO DE JANEIRO – A judge on Brazil’s top court has cancelled a ruling that forced two news sites to remove reports that a corruption investigation had included a reference to the court’s president.

Thursday’s ruling by Judge Alexandre de Moraes overturns his own order issued Monday, which had been widely criticized by other judges and by the nation’s attorney general.

That ruling targeted the news sites Crusoé and O Antagonista, which reported that a key witness in a major corruption case had testified that a code name used in a 2007 document alluded to Dias Toffoli, a lawyer who later became head of the Supreme Federal Court. They didn’t accuse him of wrongdoing.

De Moraes said he was able to confirm that the documentation used in the reporting did exist.