The European Court of Human Rights has awarded €10,000 in damages and €30,000 in costs and expenses to a journalist whose home was searched in an attempt to identify his sources.
The court found that a journalist's right not to reveal her or his sources could not be considered a mere privilege, to be granted or taken away depending on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of their sources, but was part and parcel of the right to information.
It also found that the justification advanced for the raid and seizure - preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence and protecting the reputation of others - while "relevant" was not "sufficient" to justify the action taken.
Mr Hans Martin Tillack is a German journalist with Stern magazine, who worked in Brussels from August 1999 to July 2004. In 2002 he published two articles about the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), quoting confidential documents.
The first reported the allegations of a European civil servant concerning irregularities in the EU institutions, while the second concerned OLAF's own internal investigation into these allegations.
OLAF then opened an investigation into the leak, seeking to identify the informant, and suspecting the journalist of having bribed an EU civil servant for the information.
The OLAF investigation failed to identify the source of the leak, and it then lodged a complaint against Mr Tillack with the Belgian judicial authorities, which opened their own investigation.
On March 19th, 2004 Mr Tillack's home and workplace were searched and 26 crates of papers, two boxes of files, two computers, four mobile phones and a metal filing cabinet seized. He sought the return of his working materials, but to no avail.
Mr Tillack lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman, who submitted a report to the European Parliament stating that he had found no basis, other than rumour, to the allegation that an official had been bribed.
It also found that OLAF had made incorrect and misleading statements in its submissions to him, and recommended that it should publicly acknowledge this.
Mr Tillack brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the raid and seizures was a violation of his right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by Article 10.
The court found the purpose of the searches was to identify the journalist's sources, and the measures concerned the protection of journalistic sources. Finding that the protection of these sources was part and parcel of the right to information, it stressed that this should be treated with the utmost caution.
It further found that his case was strengthened by the fact that he had been under suspicion of bribing an official because of vague uncorroborated rumours, confirmed by the fact that he had not been charged.