GERMANY - Landmark ruling on Eichmann documents

BRUSSELS - 6 / 5 / 2010 – In a landmark ruling the German Constitutional Court this week ordered the German Chancellors Office to release a set of documents on Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. A wob-request by a German-Argentinian journalist at lower courts had been turned down referring to the German national interest.

By Brigitte Alfter

For 50 years documents about Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann were held under seal by German authorities. This secrecy has now been declared illegal by the German constitutional court according to a report by newsmagazine Der Spiegel. (Spiegel report in English)

The breakthrough was achieved by German-Argentinian freelance journalist Gabriele Weber, who has been seeking access to the 3.400 documents about Eichmann held by the Federal German Intelligence Service. After World War II Eichmann escaped to Argentine but was later put on trial and sentenced to death in Israel.

According to a press release by the Federal Constitutional Court, the intelligence services had refused the request for the documents on a number of key-reasons:

·         The documents include information from foreign intelligence services, who do not agree to publication

·         Foreign relation make further secrecy necessary

·         Intelligence operations described in the documents still need to be kept secret in order to protect informants.

·         Personal data about a large number of persons needs to be protected also in the future.

·         Partial access would be impossible due to archive-principles and the large number of documents concerned. Going through all 3400 documents would mean an unproportional amount of work.