Police raid reporter second time over OLAF sources

By Karen Carstens

Date: 22/04/04

GERMAN journalist Hans-Martin Tillack had another date with the Belgian police yesterday (21 April) in an investigative crackdown to find his sources at EU anti-fraud agency OLAF.

Tillack, a staff writer for Hamburg-based Stern magazine, said the police seized 695 pages from his files, most of which had been kept in sealed boxes ever since his Brussels office was first raided to remove the "evidence" on 19 March.

Some of the files were procured in Tillack's presence at his office, where a locksmith was brought in to break open a sealed-off cabinet, while others - plus his laptop - were taken from a portable desk filing unit already in police custody.

Tillack, who returns to Hamburg in July, slammed the move as "totally out of proportion", especially as many of the documents did not even pertain to OLAF.

The police, moreover, had told him that if he had only given them one name, he would not have to go through this whole ordeal.

"I tried to explain how important protecting your sources is to a journalist, but they would have none of it," he said. "If every journalist just wrote what press releases, governments and their spokespeople tell us, then there would not be a very lively press and there would not be a very lively democracy."

Belgian authorities suspect Tillack has several OLAF sources who must be prosecuted for providing him with confidential documents they were unauthorized to handle.

Tillack said he has sent a letter of protest to OLAF chief Franz-Hermann Brüner, the Belgian prosecutor overseeing the case and Diemut Theato, chairwoman of the European Parliament's budgetary control committee.

"We will continue to report on EU topics," said the investigative journalist. "We will not let them scare us."

Belgian police have again raided the office of German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack in an attempt to find his sources at OLAF, the European Union's anti-fraud agency.