Then three journalists from The Correspondent When they interviewed Sywert van Lienden and other suspects in the face mask affair at Hackfort Castle in the spring of 2022, they could not have suspected that the police were listening. That should not be allowed, the journalistic platform argues. It would be a violation of the right to source protection.
With this right as stake dawned The Correspondent The State will appear in court in The Hague on Monday. The journalists want the judge to condemn the eavesdropping as unlawful and for the repercussions of the conversation to be quashed. In order to allow journalists to do their work properly, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) should respect the confidentiality of conversations between journalists and their informants, says the lawyer of The Correspondent: “The journalistic source secrecy is of paramount importance. It serves the purpose of free news gathering. Democracy takes a sad turn when journalists can be tapped by the State without consequences.”
Because respecting source protection concerns the entire Dutch press The Correspondent in this case supported by the journalistic interest group NVJ, the Press Freedom Fund and the Democracy and Media Foundation.
According to the State’s lawyer, eavesdropping on the interview was indeed permitted. The journalists were bycatch. They were not the target and the eavesdropping was not intended to determine the identity of Van Lienden or other attendees – that was already public knowledge. It was purely about what the suspects discussed. The police didn’t know that until late The Correspondent was coming, and therefore did not inform the examining magistrate, the person who tests investigative methods.
The Correspondent suspects, however, that the police had a special interest in the journalistic conversation. Involved investigative journalist Anne de Blok said afterwards: “Investigative journalists are involved in finding the truth, so they are very interesting for the Public Prosecution Service.” The State further argued that the tapped conversation does not fall under source protection because it was a conversation on a ‘background basis’: the journalists and interviewees agreed that the statement would not be published immediately.
According to the lawyer of The Correspondent source protection also extends to what is discussed because it allows sources to be traced, for example other people who were mentioned in the conversation. He also argued that background conversations are an essential part of journalism and are protected by source protection.
Face masks
The repercussions of the wiretapped interview are included in the file of the criminal case against Van Lienden and his associates, which starts next Thursday. During the 2020 corona epidemic, they supplied the government with 100 million euros worth of face masks. They are now charged with fraud, embezzlement, forgery and money laundering, in both a civil case and a criminal case. In passing, the State also reported that it had listened to almost 300 telephone conversations in the face mask store, with an estimated duration of 16.5 hours.
Sywert van Lienden and Bern Damme, suspects in the face mask case, were present as an audience on Monday. Van Lienden audibly showed his dissatisfaction from the audience about what the State had to say, including with brief jeers. He did not want to explain his displeasure further NRC: “I have no need to talk to you.” His partner Bernd Damme wanted to talk. He mentioned this in the conversation with The Correspondent the names of no fewer than 63 other sources had been mentioned.
Because the tapped conversation serves as evidence in a criminal case, the State argued, the Hague civil court was not competent to rule on it in any case. That was up to the criminal judge involved. Otherwise two things would get mixed up. The Correspondent responded that she is not a party in that criminal case and that the criminal court will therefore not rule on their journalistic rights.
The judge will make a ruling on February 26.