Block trial: Court rules seizure of Die Zeit material partly unlawful
A Hamburg court partly backtracked, saying recordings about the older daughter should not have been seized. It will still examine conversations with the younger daughter.
Symbolic image · Photo: Ajepbah / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
The Hamburg Regional Court has ruled that the seizure of reporting material from the weekly Die Zeit was partly unlawful in the trial of Hamburg businesswoman Christina Block. Acting on complaints from the publisher and a journalist, the court lifted parts of its own search warrant, it emerged on Tuesday evening. It said the provisional seizure of audio recordings concerning the older daughter was unlawful because only recordings about the younger daughter are relevant to the case. The court also dropped its search for alleged contract documents, saying it found it credible that there was no contract and no money changed hands.
Recordings of the journalist's conversations with the younger daughter shortly after her alleged abduction remain seized. The court said questioning child victim-witnesses so close to the alleged crime could influence their testimony through suggestion, and that without knowing what was said, their later statements to police were hard to assess.
The material, gathered for Die Zeit's podcast "House of Block," was seized on Oct. 12. The newspaper called the move an "attack on press freedom" and handed over the recordings only under seal. The German Journalists' Association and Reporters Without Borders also protested. Block faces charges including child abduction and dangerous bodily harm, and is presumed innocent.