RSF has condemned the confiscation of two computer hard drives belonging to the online newspaper “El Mostrador” ( http://www.elmostrador.cl ) on 27 April 2004. The seizure was ordered under an anti-terrorist law by a judge investigating the 24 March bombing of the Brazilian Consulate in Santiago. The equipment was returned the next day. Police seized […]
RSF has condemned the confiscation of two computer hard drives belonging to the online newspaper “El Mostrador” ( http://www.elmostrador.cl ) on 27 April 2004. The seizure was ordered under an anti-terrorist law by a judge investigating the 24 March bombing of the Brazilian Consulate in Santiago. The equipment was returned the next day.
Police seized the two hard drives from the publication’s offices following a judge’s order citing the need “to copy and analyse the hard drives for the purposes of obtaining information on the existence of a new e-mail claiming responsibility for the bombing.”
“This confiscation is a violation of the confidentiality of sources, a cornerstone of press freedom,” RSF said in a letter to Judge Gloria Ana Chevesich, who issued the seizure order. “If this principle is not respected, people will cease to confide in journalists and the public’s right to be informed will suffer.”
RSF pointed out that Article 8 of the Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says, “Every journalist has the right to keep his or her sources of information, notes, personal and professional archives confidential.”
The computers contained an e-mail message signed by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), a far-left group that claimed responsibility for the bombing. A second e-mail message received by the newspaper the next day, however, reportedly signed by one of the MIR’s leaders, denied any involvement in the attacks.
The computers were those of “El Mostrador” editor Lino Solís de Ovando G. and legal section editor Jorge Molina Sanhueza. Police had checked the content of Molina’s computer several weeks earlier, with his consent, but found nothing unusual.
On the evening of 26 April, “El Mostrador” was informed that police would be coming to inspect Solís’s computer, but was not told that equipment would be confiscated. The newspaper has condemned the seizure as a violation of the confidentiality of sources.
