Germany suspends treason investigation into news website

The Guardian reports that Range said he was pausing inquiries “for the good of press and media freedom” and that he would “await the results of an internal investigation into whether the journalists from the news platform netzpolitik.org had quoted from a classified intelligence report before deciding how to proceed”.

The German Justice Ministry said it warned Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range against pursuing an investigation for treason into two journalists writing for the blog Netzpolitik.org, German daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported on Monday.

Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reports Range saying: “Until the expert opinion comes in, the investigations will be stopped”.

Bfv said the articles were based on leaked documents.

Writers of Netzpolitik (Net politics), which focuses on “digital civil rights” and was in 2014 awarded Germany’s Grimme Online Award, were defiant, stating that “we will not be intimidated”.

Germany’s first treason investigation against a media organisation in half a century caused shock, particularly over its target. German authorities on Thursday opened an investigation into the website’s bloggers, Markus Beckedahl and Andre Meister, as well as an unidentified third party, accusing them of treason, according to news reports.

In a scathing attack, the leading Green MP Renate Künast, who is also chair of the Bundestag’s legal affairs committee, called the investigation a “humiliation to the rule of law”.

The February article alleged Germany’s domestic intelligence agency wanted additional funds to increase its online surveillance programmes.

The German Association of Lawyers demanded the abolition of the charge of treason for journalists.

The suspended investigation accused the journalists under section 94 of the German criminal code, which stipulates a minimum punishment of one year in prison up to a maximum sentence of life behind bars. More than two years after the Snowden revelations, and after German officials publicly expressed outrage at the surveillance practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA), the documents reveal that Germany is playing a double spy game.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Strauss was forced to resign after treason charges were brought against the news weekly Der Spiegel for a cover story alleging that West Germany’s armed forces were unprepared to defend it against the communist threat in the Cold War.