(RSF/IFEX) – Jean-Pierre Rey, a photo-journalist from the Gamma agency who was detained by the National Anti-terrorist Division (Division nationale antiterroriste, DNAT) and held for questioning in Paris on 3 September 2001, is the fifth journalist to face such a measure from the French justice system in the past twenty months. RSF is concerned by […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Jean-Pierre Rey, a photo-journalist from the Gamma agency who was detained by the National Anti-terrorist Division (Division nationale antiterroriste, DNAT) and held for questioning in Paris on 3 September 2001, is the fifth journalist to face such a measure from the French justice system in the past twenty months.
RSF is concerned by the increasing number of cases in France in which the courts put pressure on journalists to compel them to reveal their sources. The organisation expressed its concerns in a 4 September letter to Minister of Justice Marylise Lebranchu.
RSF denounces the use of measures involving journalist’s loss of liberty, such as detention for questioning, to compel them to act as assistants to the justice system or police. The DNAT’s objective in holding Rey for questioning was to “collect” the journalist’s information, as he is a specialist in Corsican affairs.
RSF recalls that the principle of the protection of sources is the only guarantee of independent investigative journalism. Re-endorsed in the 4 January 1993 reform of the Penal Code, the right to the protection of journalists’ sources is nonetheless regularly threatened in France. In the past twenty months, four other journalists have been held for questioning in similar circumstances.
On 14 December 1999, Hubert Levet, a regular contributor to the economics daily “Agefi” (Agence économique et financière) was detained following the lodging of a complaint against X by the directors of the Aérospatiale-Matra company for “disclosing confidential financial information.” The journalist was held for questioning and investigated by an examining judge from the Paris High Court’s financial branch (see IFEX alert of 21 December 1999).
On 1 May 2000, Victor Robert, a journalist from the CAPA news agency, was held for questioning at the DNAT’s offices in Paris, in order to be heard in the context of the investigation into the attack on a McDonald’s restaurant in Quévert, Brittany, which caused fatalities. Robert was heard as a witness because the Revolutionary Army of Brittany (Armée révolutionnaire bretonne) sent him a press release in which the group denied any involvement in the attack. The journalist refused to disclose his sources and was released after thirty-one hours in police custody.
On 17 October 2000, French journalist and television producer Arnaud Hamelin, director of the Sunset Presse agency, was held for questioning in the context of the preliminary investigation opened against former minister of finance Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “and any others,” for having “removed documents from the justice system.” The journalist was interrogated about the conditions under which the recording of a video cassette containing the confession of Jean-Claude Méry, an alleged secret financier of the RPR party, was made. He was also interrogated about the circumstances which led to the publication of the video cassette’s contents in the 22 and 23 September 2000 editions of the newspaper “le Monde”. Hamelin was released after spending forty-eight hours in custody, but he was investigated for “receiving information protected by professional secrecy” (see IFEX alerts of 19 and 18 October 2000).
On 16 January, Dominique Paganelli, a journalist from Canal +, was held for questioning by the DNAT, in the context of an investigation into two attacks on public buildings in Ajaccio in 1999.
Moreover, RSF notes that the Court of Cassation recently approved the existence for journalists of the offence of “concealing a violation of investigative secrecy” or “professional secrecy”, which allows for the French courts’ increasingly systematic re-examination of the right to inform.
RSF reminded the minister of justice that in its most recent condemnation of France for “violating a journalist’s freedom of expression,” in 2000, the European Human Rights Court urged the French justice system to seek “reasonably proportionate means in [its] pursuit of its legitimate aims, with consideration for a democratic society’s interest in guaranteeing and maintaining press freedom.”
