The Public Prosecution Service will re-examine the rules on how to act in criminal cases where journalists are tapped because they have contacts with suspects.
The top of the Public Prosecution Service, the Board of Attorneys General, made this decision today knownmade. The decision was taken after four days ago The Financial Times revealed that three journalists from online platform The Correspondent were overheard in March 2022 while they met with Sywert van Lienden and his two business partners. The three entrepreneurs are suspected of money laundering, fraud and embezzlement in the supply of face masks.
In March last year, prosecutors from the functional public prosecutor’s office found out that the suspects would have a conversation with journalists a day later at Hackfort Castle in Vorden. With the permission of the examining magistrate, the Public Prosecution Service says, it was then decided to use a special investigative tool. Four sets of recording equipment were placed in the meeting room. It resulted in a 181-page conversation report that was placed in the criminal file. The journalists were also later told nothing about this action. According to Van Lienden’s lawyer, Han Jahae, this action is “shocking and out of proportion.” When asked, the Public Prosecution Service said that the examining magistrate “was not explicitly asked for permission” to also eavesdrop on the journalists.
Source protection
The current instructions on how to act in criminal proceedings against journalists state that ‘a public prosecutor may only use a means of coercion that could affect source protection if he has received permission to do so from the chief public prosecutor and the Board of Procurators General. has been informed.” That did not happen in this case.
The case prosecutors independently ruled that these rules “did not apply, because the coercive measures were aimed at the suspects and not at the journalists. In addition, the suspects were known, also in the outside world, so the right to source protection was not at stake.” The Public Prosecution Service says that “the officers involved did not make this decision lightly. They classified the presence of journalists in this case as by-catch.”
The Public Prosecution Service says that “it is ultimately up to the court in this criminal case to assess whether the Public Prosecution Service has made the right assessments and has properly applied the Instruction.” The chief officer of the functional public prosecutor’s office, Michiel Zwinkels, only says he regrets that the journalists were never informed that they had been tapped. “That should have been different.” The Public Prosecution Service says it will “talk to the justice department’s case officers involved to see whether the organization can learn something from this case.”
In conversation with the NVJ
Public Prosecution Service boss Rinus Otte says he will re-examine the rules in this regard. “We understand very well that the course of events raises questions among journalists and others. The Public Prosecution Service believes that journalists should be able to do their work freely. We stand for press freedom and the right to source protection,” said Otte. “We take this matter very seriously and are examining the Instruction. I will also be talking to the Dutch Association of Journalists.”
Lawyer Jens van de Brink, who specializes in media law, calls the position of the Public Prosecution Service very strange. “This running of the Public Prosecution Service does not make things any better. No sorry, it should never have happened, but: coercive measures were aimed at suspects and not at journalists. Apparently the Public Prosecution Service believes it can eavesdrop on journalists, as long as it is ‘aimed’ at their interlocutor.”