Germany suspends treason probe against news website

Germany’s justice minister on Friday questioned a decision by prosecutors to open a treason investigation against two journalists, a move that prompted strong criticism from free speech activists.

The blog had in February and April published documents on plans to step up Internet surveillance by Germany’s Federal Service for the Protection of the Constitution, whose chief Hans-Georg Maassen filed a criminal complaint.

“Investigating the acclaimed media outlet netzpolitik.org as accomplices in treason charges is a direct attack on freedom of the press, which we thought was outlawed with the Constitutional Court ruling in the Cicero case 2007″.

Range said the criminal probe had been halted while investigators waited on an expert analysis of the leaked security documents to determine whether they contained any state secrets, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper. His office did not immediately return a call seeking elaboration. 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.

A well-known German political and tech news website has received (English translation here) a almost unprecedented letter from the German Federal Public Prosecutor, saying that two of the site’s top editors are being investigated for treason after having published secret government documents earlier this year.

On Twitter #Landesverrat (#treason) became a top trending topic, and news website Spiegel Online said the accusation was widely seen as a “knighting” of the journalists. The article notes that the German government’s plans mimicked the mass data acquisition by the NSA and includes the full text of a leaked secret surveillance budget from 2013.

“The only thing we can do at the moment is to raise awareness to say that it’s a battle of press freedom”, Beckedahl said, adding that the last time German journalists were charged with treason was in 1962.

It comes amid continued debate over sweeping online surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) revealed by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and the degree of German cooperation.

Netzpolitik journalist Andre Meister, one of the journalists who had been under investigation, told The Local that the investigation was “absurd” and a “heavy blow” for press freedom in Germany.

Many commentators drew parallels to a treason case against news weekly Der Spiegel after it published a report in 1962 that pointed to shortcomings in the German armed forces.