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2009-04-04

Refusal of media access for journalists from Berlin

Not only activists and the "people's kitchen" le sabot were refused entrance into Germany and/or France. On Wednesday, independent journalist Björn Kietzmann was denied media access to the NATO summit. The BKA (the German Federal Criminal Police Office) has a file on Kietzmann. He is the so-called LIMO-Database ("left-wing offenders") without any legal basis. This database was passed on to the NATO.

In the morning of 2nd April, Kietzmann managed to stop the data transfer in the District Court in Wiesbaden. The BKA appealed against this decision and was successful on the same evening in a court in Kassel. They argued that the NATO already knew about the file on Kietzmann and one further journalist. Therefore the data transfer cannot be reversed and the recommendation to allow Kietzmann entry to the summit should not be made.

Both journalists won't be able to report on the summit. According to a NATO media release, 3000 journalists are reporting from the summit and are allowed to enter the security zone. The "rights" of the NATO stand anyways above the federal rights and, as the confrontations of the recent days have shown clearly, are not to be questioned. What we are left with are radical restrictions on the freedom of the press and one further scandal on data transfer for the BKA.

Source: http://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/3272