Protecting Press Freedom

Opposition parliamentarians came out over the weekend in favor of amended legislation to prevent journalists from prosecution as accessories to breach of secrecy. The lawmakers were responding to prosecutors' confirmation that 17 reporters were under investigation for quoting from classified documents intended for a parliamentary panel probing the activities of Germany's intelligence services.

"Clarity must be established through legislation," said Green party chief Reinhard Bütikofer on ARD television. "It cannot be that journalists who do their duty -- exposing that which possibly shuns the public light -- may then later be prosecuted."

Bütikofer's party vetted a bill on the topic last year, but it was quashed in May by votes from parliamentarians from Germany's ruling coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.

Opposition party lawmakers and panel members Max Stadler of the Free Democratic Party and Wolfgang Neskovic of the Left Party also said in the Neue Presse newspaper that current legislation should be amended to protect journalists.

Large, leaky apparatus

Neskovic rejected the suggestion that members of the panel investigating the activities of Germany's BND intelligence service, or their staff members, had leaked the documents to the press.

"Certainly more than 100 people had access to these files -- government civil servants also," he said.

His comments were echoed by panel colleague Michael Hartmann, a Social Democrat.

"The apparatus is large. Above all… there are the ministries," he said in the Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung daily. "Some documents were already public before we, the member's of the panel, even got them in our hands."

Meanwhile, panel head Siegfried Kauder of the Christian Democrats defended the investigations of journalists.

"The Federal Chancellery had already indicated to me that it would not provide the panel with any more classified files if this were to continue," he told the Neue Presse.

Kauder said he felt like he had to take action.

"My aim was to batten down the hatches," he said. "I want to find out who the informant or informants are."

"Excessive and ineffectual"

The editors in chief of the affected newspapers published a joint declaration criticizing the prosecutors. They called the investigations an "excessive and ineffectual attempt" to limit the freedom to report, according to the Associated Press.

The statement said their aim was to prevent the public from learning details about the handling of Murat Kurnaz. The German-born Turk spent four-and-a-half years at the US military prison at Guantanamo in Cuba before being released without charge. His case was one of the topics examined by the panel, which was set up in April 2006. It was tasked with examining whether German intelligence services had violated human rights in the fight against terrorism, and what role the government played.

The focus of attention was on the foreign intelligence service BND and its involvement with the US Central Intelligence Agency at the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.