29 May 2006
Alert
Parliament releases report about journalists who spied for, or were spied upon by, state intelligence service
(RSF/IFEX) - The German Parliament (Bundestag) has posted on its website ( http://www.bundestag.de/aktuell/pkg/index.html ) part of a report by a former judge revealing that the country's external intelligence service, the BND, has been spying on journalists. Some passages were censored and names replaced by initials at the request of the journalists. The report was posted on 26 May 2006.
BND chief Ernst Uhrlau publicly apologised for spying on the media over several years and also for paying some journalists to spy on their colleagues.
The government has said it will soon appoint a special investigator into civil servants' involvement in the scandal, and that disciplinary measures will be taken, though it rejected the need for a public trial.
On 16 May, RSF called for an enquiry to identify those who ordered and carried out these illegal practices, in the hope they would not be repeated.
Source:
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
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75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
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