Rafael Ángel Calderón

The hospital's top floor has some of the most specialized intensive-care beds in Costa Rica.

The court on Friday declared unlawful the testimony and evidence provided by former ICE board member José Antonio Lobo, the prosecution’s star witness.

ICE attorneys say that despite the out-of-court settlement in the civil case, all legal proceedings in the criminal case will continue.

Justices of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, or Sala III, on Friday overturned a 2012 ruling that acquitted Costa Rica’s former President Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría on charges of influence peddling in a case that made international headlines and forced Rodríguez to step down as secretary-general of the Organization of American States.

The controversy this week over the nonexistent U.S. military base in Costa Rica brings to mind the year 1985, when U.S. Green Berets were training Costa Rican “policemen” in Murciélago, just north of the Santa Rose Peninsula in Guanacaste.

CHIEF Prosecutor Francisco Dall’Anese on Wednesday announced his office has launched an investigation to determine whether former Costa Rican President José María Figueres (1994-1998)...