Hidden cameras

A German court ruled on Thursday that two Dutch journalists are to stand trial next month for secretly filming an interview with a former SS assassin.

Reporters Jan Pons and Jelle Visser, from the Dutch current affairs program Een Vandaag, allegedly used a hidden camera to record the interview with the convicted assassin Heinrich Boere in his nursing home in 2009. They were accused of trespass and breach of confidentiality under German privacy laws.

"They could face three years in jail for revealing a conversation that should have remained private," a spokesman for the regional court in Aachen said on Thursday. Their trial is scheduled for February 3.

The reporters claimed to have resorted to the subterfuge as a "last resort" after both Boere and his lawyer refused numerous interview requests. Boere launched criminal proceedings after the interview was broadcast and issued a complaint to the Dutch Press Council. The complaint was later dismissed, however, on the grounds that public interest was more important than Boere's right to privacy.

The 90-year-old was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany in 2010 after confessing to the murders of three civilians in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in 1944. He had been a member of an SS commando unit tasked with assassinating suspected members of the Dutch resistance movement.

Relatives of the victims said that they are angry that charges have been brought against the journalists, German news agency EPD reported on Thursday.

Author: Charlotte Chelsom-Pill (AFP, epd)
Editor: Michael Lawton