German prosecutors tap journalists’ communication about el-Masri

In the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured by CIA agents, German media is reporting that prosecutors listened in on conversations between el-Masri’s lawyer and journalists. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily, prosecuting attorneys targeted talks between Khaled el-Masri’s lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, and reporters from the German weekly magazine Stern as well as the German public broadcaster ZDF. Prosecutors were apparently seeking more information about el-Masri’s alleged kidnappers and in January this year, requested the Munich District Court to have Gnjidic’s phone lines tapped, Stern magazine reported. Prosecutors have justified their actions by saying el-Masri’s kidnappers could have tried to contact him in order to threaten him or offer him a deal. The Munich-based lawyer Thilo Pfordte, who is representing Gnjidic at the Constitutional Court, said he saw it as more likely that prosecutors were interested in knowing what Gnjidic told journalists than tracking down the kidnapping culprits. (Deutsche Welle,December 07, 2006)

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>