Germany's federal justice minister Heiko Maas has fired the country's chief prosecutor after he accused the minister of unacceptable political interference in a treason investigation.
Mr Maas said his relationship with the prosecutor, Mr Harald Range, had been "considerably disturbed" after a probe of an internet rights website sparked a wave of outrage from journalists and the German public.
The website, Netzpolitik.org, was accused of publishing classified domestic intelligence files.
News that the website’s founder and a journalist were facing criminal charges prompted a Berlin rally protesting at what has been seen as a clampdown on press freedom and an attempt to intimidate journalists and their sources.
Hours after it became public last Friday, Mr Range said he had put the investigation on hold pending the outcome of an independent report into the affair. That didn’t placate federal justice minister Heiko Maas, who said he didn’t believe the case had any merit and ordered Mr Range to spike the report.
Yesterday Mr Range went before television cameras to say he had followed the wishes of the justice minister, but accused him of an “intolerable encroachment on the independence of the judiciary”.
Though judges in Germany are independent, the Karlsruhe-based federal prosecutor is subject to directives from the federal justice minister. But Mr Range left little doubt what he thought of his superior at the press conference, telling journalists the preliminary findings of the report Mr Maas had ordered stopped.
‘Politically inopportune’
Mr Range said, in the view of the lawyer who reviewed the case, the leaks to Netzpolitik.org did constitute an illegal breach of state secrets and justify opening the case.
“The freedom of the press and of expression is a valuable asset but this freedom, including on the internet, is not limitless and does not absolve journalists of the duty to comply with the law,” said Mr Range. He then hit out at his boss in Berlin, saying it was unacceptable to “influence investigations because their potential result appears politically inopportune”.
The case centres on two documents from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), that appear to contain plans to step up internet surveillance. The BvF filed a complaint after the documents appeared on Netzpolitik.org and asked the federal prosecutor to investigate.
With no sign of resolution in sight, a spokeswoman for chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a public vote of no-confidence in Mr Range on Monday. The German leader "supported emphatically" Mr Maas in his efforts to head off the prosecution of two Netzpolitik journalists, according to a government spokeswoman.
Fuelling the anger of German internet activists and journalists is that the two Netzpolitik activists are the only ones facing charges as a result of the revelations of US whistleblower Edward Snowden two years after he exposed mass communications surveillance by the NSA.
Free press
Mr Range’s office has dropped an inquiry into US spying on Berlin politicians, including Dr Merkel’s mobile phone, due to a lack of co-operation from Washington.
Given that lack of progress, Berlin politicians have been understandably wary of the idea of prosecuting journalists for highlighting attempts by the BfV to adopt NSA-like practices in Germany. Another reason for their caution is history: the crackdown on the free press in the Nazi era and lingering memories of the last treason case against the media.
The so-called Spiegel Affair arose in 1962 after the Hamburg news magazine published a Nato assessment that West German defence forces were "only partially ready to defend the country". Two Spiegel editors-in-chief were arrested and charged with treason while publisher Rudolf Augstein was held in custody for 102 days.
Eventually the trial was dropped when it emerged that then federal justice minister Franz-Josef Strauss had exceeded his competencies and lied to parliament, ending his career in West German federal politics.
Yesterday opposition politicians called for the resignation of Mr Range and for a full parliamentary investigation into who knew what, and when, in the Netzpolitik affair.
