EU Arrests Journalist

EU Arrests Journalist

EUROPEAN COURT GIVES COMMISSION POWER TO CONTROL THE PRESS

By Jeffrey Titford MEP � Eastern Counties

UK Independence Party, 22 October 2004

On the 15th October, the European Court of First Instance threw out a case brought by investigative journalist, Hans Martin-Tillack in which he sought to prevent the European Commission from having access to his records. In so doing, the Court has kicked aside 50 years of international case law. It is a test case that has shown that the European Court is now perfectly willing to over rule the European Court of Human Rights. This non-EU court has, until now, been seen as the final arbiter on human rights issues.

The precedent that this ruling sets is astounding. It gives the Commission the power to stop journalists investigating any of its myriad of abuses. Martin-Tillack had written a series of hard-hitting articles for Stern Magazine, which exposed rampant fraud and general skulduggery in the EU and paid particular attention to alleged irregularities in OLAF, the EU�s Anti-Fraud Office. In preparing his material he used inside sources and acquired an extensive archive of investigative files collected together over five years.

In March this year, OLAF, which is supposed to investigate fraud within the EU, raided Mr Martin-Tillack�s home in the small hours, arrested him, impounded his records both at home and at his office and held him incommunicado for more than ten hours. They took his computers, address books, telephone records and over a thousand pages of his notes. This was all done on a spurious claim that he had acquired some of his inside information by paying his sources for it. I happen to know one of his major sources and I can tell you that he certainly wasn�t paid a bean.

Mr Martin-Tillack was even denied access to a lawyer during his lengthy incarceration. In fact, the only way he could let the outside world know of his plight was to take advantage of a chance encounter with someone he met when he asked to use the toilet! He briefed this good Samaritan about his situation and word got out. It is hard to credit something like this going on in civilised society. It sounds more like life in Hitler�s Third Reich or Soviet Russia under Stalin.

The International Federation of Journalists supported Mr Martin-Tillack�s case, which he brought largely to protect his sources. Unfortunately, the European Court�s decision means that OLAF can now peruse all his records at leisure and identify and presumably punish his sources. This unprecedented ruling very effectively gives Brussels the power to persecute any journalist who dares to investigate the dark side of the EU and means anyone inside the Brussels bureaucracy is going to think twice about letting the cat out of the bag on corruption.

His lawyers quoted extensive case law and pleaded that the Commission�s efforts to identify a journalist�s sources using these methods was a �flagrant violation� of press protection, a principle established over decades in European Convention Law. They argued that the protection of sources was the cornerstone, not only of a free press but of a �genuine democracy�. All this, fell on deaf ears and the Court has, at a stroke, rendered investigative journalism in Brussels virtually impossible.

It accepted claims by the Commission that it had no role in the arrest of Mr Martin-Tillack, despite a great deal of evidence from leaked documents which clearly demonstrated that it had orchestrated the raid from start to finish. All of this leaves me wondering what kind of a society we are creating. We all know that the press can be a damnable nuisance at times but they do act as a control on officialdom, which gets above itself. Not anymore. OLAF acted on hearsay and there is no evidence that Martin-Tillack actually committed a crime at all. His only sin was to make the Commission look bad.

A former Interpol chief has described OLAF as a serious threat to civil liberties, with more power to raid people�s property and impound records than any police chief in the world. He said there is �absolutely no control whatsoever�.

All this, coupled with the EU�s plans for a single area of �justice� which were debated in Parliament a few days ago and the disgraceful sacking of the Commission�s former Chief Accountant, Marta Andreasen for daring to speak out against the risk of rampant fraud within the EU�s finances, paints a very bleak picture of an increasingly totalitarian organisation, running completely out of control. It is perfectly clear that the Commission is not interesting in dealing with internal corruption. Its priority is shutting up those who do try to do something about it.

Isn�t it about time we all woke up to what is happening? How long are we going to let the EU become ever more powerful by dismantling our basic human rights and our democracy? If we wait much longer and continue to take heed of the �useful idiots� who claim we must be members of the EU in perpetuity and then make childishly naïve claims about �reform� and �renegotiation�, it will be too late. Our freedoms will be gone and we will have lost the power to free ourselves from a European Empire, which, based on the Martin-Tillack ruling, would be downright terrifying.

More information on Jeffrey Titford and the UK Independence Party is available at www.jeffreytitfordmep.co.uk and www.ukip.org