Germany’s justice minister fired the country’s top prosecutor on
Tuesday over the prosecutor’s treason investigation of two prominent bloggers,
culminating a dayslong fight among public officials over the limits of press
freedom.
The federal
prosecutor general, Harald Range, said earlier Tuesday that the
government in Berlin was inappropriately trying to block his investigation of
the two journalists, who published classified documents on the domestic
intelligence service’s plans to expand Internet surveillance.
But Justice Minister Heiko
Maas countered hours later that
Mr. Range’s claim was wrong. Mr. Maas said the prosecutor had in fact agreed on
Friday to suspend the probe pending a legal review by the Justice Ministry. Mr.
Maas—who had earlier expressed doubt that the journalists’ actions amounted to
treason—said on Tuesday that he and the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that Mr. Range, who is 67 years
old, should give up his post.
“I have let Federal
Prosecutor General Range know that my trust in his service has suffered lasting
damage,” Mr. Maas told reporters in a brief statement in Berlin. “As agreed
with the Chancellery, I will ask the Federal President today to move him into
retirement.”
Mr. Maas’s firing of
Germany’s top prosecutor—who investigates sensitive terrorism cases and other
major crimes—marked a crescendo in a case that has embarrassed Ms. Merkel’s
government and touched off debate over how to balance freedom of speech,
privacy, and security in the European Union’s most populous country.
The case triggered
widespread criticism since Netzpolitik.org, a popular blog on digital rights
issues, published a letter last week from Mr. Range notifying two of its
journalists they were being investigated on suspicion of treason. The probe
centered on two blog posts from February and April that disclosed plans by
Germany’s domestic intelligence service to boost its surveillance of Internet
traffic.
Mr. Range on Tuesday
accused the Justice Ministry, which supervises the prosecutor general, of
yielding to the criticism for political reasons. He said an external review he
ordered had reached a preliminary conclusion that the legal interpretation
underpinning the investigation was valid, but that the Justice Ministry ordered
the review stopped.
“To influence
investigations because their possible result appears politically inconvenient
is an intolerable intrusion into the independence of the justice system,” Mr.
Range said.
Mr. Maas responded
later Tuesday that Mr. Range had agreed on Friday to cancel the external review
without knowledge of the results and to rely on the Justice Ministry’s review
instead.
“The actions and
statements today by Federal Prosecutor General Range are not comprehensible and
send the wrong message to the public,” Mr. Maas said.
Criminal
investigations of journalists are rare in Germany, which watchdog organization
Reporters Without Borders ranks as 12th-best in the world in its index of
global press freedoms.
The most prominent
case occurred in 1962, when the police raided the offices of the news magazine
Der Spiegel and arrested several journalists on suspicion of treason after it
published what the government claimed were secret details about weaknesses in
the German military. Der Spiegel eventually prevailed in the ensuing legal
battle.
But possible government overreach and surveillance have become hot-button issues again in Germany in the wake of
former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s
disclosures of global eavesdropping programs. Revelations of German spy agencies’ complicity in NSA surveillance have repeatedly put Ms. Merkel on the defensiveagainst domestic criticism
that she wasn’t doing enough to protect civil rights at home.
After
Netzpolitik.org revealed the treason investigation into journalists Andre Meisterand Markus Beckedahl, government officials quickly distanced
themselves from it. Both the Justice Ministry and the Interior Ministry said
they doubted that the journalists’ actions qualified as treason.
Mr. Meister said in
a blog post on Tuesday that the investigation, sparked by a complaint from
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, was meant to scare journalists and
potential sources.
“We know, of course,
that in addition to us, our and other potential informants are meant to be
intimidated,” Mr. Meister wrote.
A spokeswoman for
Ms. Merkel said on Monday that Justice Minister Heiko Maas had her support and
that freedom of the press had to be protected.
An investigation by
the prosecutor general could result in charges against the journalists. German
law stipulates that treason carries at least a one-year prison sentence.
On Sunday, Mr. Range
said he had launched the investigation in May after a criminal complaint filed
by the domestic intelligence agency, known by its German initials BfV, and that
he had commissioned an external review to determine whether or not the
documents disclosed by Netzpolitik.org were state secrets.
“It was necessary to
take legal action against the publication of BfV documents classified as
confidential or secret in order to secure the future ability of my agency to
fight against extremism and terrorism,” BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen told Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
By
ANTON TROIANOVSKI
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